Domain Names in Oz without .au??

[Dan_Tebbutt@acp.com.au]

Robert/Jan

Names such as '.com', '.net' are not intended to be US-specific. They are
officially called international Top-Level Domains (iTLDs) and include .com,
.net, .gov, .edu, .org, .mil (several new iTLDs have been recently created
- see APC March page 26). Theoretically at least these should be used for
companies/groups that are international in nature (eg wipo.org, hp.com) but
in practice they are mostly US groups because that is where iTLD domain
names are handed out.

So it is appropriate for Australian firms and groups to apply for iTLDs
especially if they have an international reach (eg http://www.apcmag.com,
http://www.telstra.net).

Note that there is also a rapidly growing national TLD for the United
States, .us (eg http://www.state.ca.us, cnri.reston.va.us). We'd maybe all
prefer universal application of the geographic naming system, but it's way
too late.

Dan





hartr@interweft.com.au on 12/03/97 05:49:37 PM

To:   jwhit@primenet.com
cc:   link@charlotte.anu.edu.au (bcc: Dan Tebbutt/ACP)
Subject:  Re: Domain Names in Oz without .au??




On Tue, 11 Mar 1997, Jan Whitaker wrote:

> I was just looking at a publication from TAFE Queensland [their handbook]
> and noticed that the webaddress for it is: www.tafe.net.  The performance
> was a bit dodgy, so I thought I'd have a look at why they were posting in
> the US.  Low and behold, it's an Australian site [see the traceroute
> coming from the US back to the address after my sig].
>
> Is this proper use of domain names within the agreed upon regs of the
> powers that be in the IETF?  Or is somenoe stretching the rules to get
> more 'common' names?  This could get very confusing.

Jan

This is perfectly OK. Remember that as far as the computers,
routers and other devices on the Internet are concerned, the _name_ of
a device is used only to 'resolve' to an IP address (using DNS). It is
the IP address that is used to make routing decisions.

So it is perfectly possible for an Australian company/organisation to
have a "US" domain name and yet be located here.

All a "US" domain name means is that their DNS delegation comes from
the USA (they are in the US 'net' DNS zone).

There are quite a few Australian companies and organisations that have
domain names from US zones (particularly in the .com zone). This
results from the restrictions that apply to .com domains here in
Australia (basically you can only have a .com.au domain name for a
company - not a product or registered trademark).

More recently, ISPs and others have taken exception to the charging
(and other) policies of MelbourneIT (who have taken over the
commercial administration of the .com.au domain) and are having their
permanent clients register for US domains instead.

Robert Hart                             hartr@interweft.com.au
Voice: +61 (0)3 9735 3586	    http://www.interweft.com.au/
InterWeft, 35 Summit Road, Lilydale, Victoria 3140, Australia
        IT, data and voice networking
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