[ih] Naming and addressing 1971-1989

[Eric Gade]

I'm getting closer to an answer on the periodization of the selection of the
ISO list, for those that are interested.  I've been making my way (slowly)
through every single email in Namedroppers.  From March-June of 1984 there
was a lot of heated activity, particularly in May when discussions of naming
semantics, inspired by two draft memos for Domain Requirements by Postel and
Reynolds, stalled the implementation of the plan.  There were a lot of
voices in there -- some people calling for everyone to wait on IFIP 6.5
before making final naming decisions to those strictly concerned with the
case of the Arpa-Internet.

Postel responded in late May with a rather heated and long email addressing
many of the issues.  In this email he first acknowledges that he likes the
idea of country TLDs, but is skeptical that they (the NIC, I suppose) would
be able to properly and fairly categorize what would be a country.  After
this the conversation calmed a bit and became more detailed (and civil).
 Then nothing for more than a month.  On July 28th Postel announced (and
posted) the final draft of the Domain Requirements RFC.  Here he first lists
ISO3166 alpha-2 as the standard for ccTLDs.

So sometime between the 2nd draft (May 1984) and the final draft (July 28
1984) of the Domain Requirements RFC, Postel et al found out about the ISO
list.  Furthermore, it seems that mid-1984 was the period when he -- and
perhaps the NIC? -- first considered the country issue for the Domain system
they were implementing, meaning outside of the IFIP discussions.  Several
people seem to have been influential in this global view, particularly
Robert Maas, someone with the last name "Ferud", Mark Horton, and Robert
Cole.  Does anyone have contact info for these individuals?

I have yet to even start making my way through the files of MSGGROUP.  If
someone knows a better source for these I would appreciate it.  Several
discussions on Namedroppers in mid 1984 indicate that a discussion about the
IFIP meeting May 1-4 1984 took place on the actual msggroup list after the
fact.

On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 8:39 AM, Craig Partridge <craig at aland.bbn.com>wrote:

>
>
> Also a quick question folks have been asking me -- when did we have country
> code TLDs and when did we decide to use the ISO list?   I think we had
> ccTLDs
> by late 1985 as .UK was active and Jon P. had assigned .US to himself (at
> least, that's what I remember).  But I think choosing a list of ccTLDs
> blessed
> by ISO was done a bit later.  Yes?
>
> Thanks!
>
> Craig
>
>
-- 
Eric
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://elists.isoc.org/pipermail/internet-history/attachments/20100421/276a7401/attachment.htm>