[ih] Domain Names

[Vint Cerf]

we had host.txt that mapped host names into IP addresses.
SRI NIC managed it and you downloaded this text file as reference to  
map into IP addresses.

Host names before DNS were simple things like MIT, UCLA, etc

so an email address might be something like vcerf at isi-c

the domain name system introduced hierarchy, cacheing, timeouts, and  
so on as well as FQDN concept.

vint

On Jan 19, 2010, at 11:21 PM, Richard Bennett wrote:

> We're coming up on the 25th anniversary of the first domain name  
> registration, that of symbolics.com on March 15, 1985. Not the first  
> domain name created, but the first one registered in the fledgling  
> domain name system. Since I'm too old to remember that era, I'm  
> wondering if anybody has any salient observations about what the  
> Internet was like before the domain name system was created. How did  
> people keep track of everything?
>
> I seem to remember a cumbersome system of bang addresses for e-mail  
> that apparently arose out of UUCP, but wasn't there a more elegant  
> system of naming for ARPANET and the fledgling Internet before 1985?  
> I have the feeliing that there will be some events to commemorate  
> the rise of the Dot Com era, and it would be nice if some of the  
> facts were more or less in order.
>
> Thanks,
>
> RB
>
> -- 
> Richard Bennett
> Research Fellow
> Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
> Washington, DC
>