[ih] Domain Names

[Craig Partridge]

I don't believe BBN had an official role in "official host names".
(BBN had its hand in many things -- the point is I don't think the major
locus of decision on this one was at BBN).

I believe it was an SRI NIC function.  But it is before my time.

Thanks!

Craig

> Thanks, Craig. I think I've got it all sorted out except the notion of 
> an "official host name". Apparently that was a convention that started 
> on ARPANET and was carried over. Did the BBN ARPANET specs define host 
> names, or was that an organic development from the Network User Group? 
> One of the RFCs specified the syntax, but it's not clear whether that 
> was informational following from a BBN spec or not.
> 
> Thanks again
> 
> On 1/20/2010 3:51 AM, Craig Partridge wrote:
> > Hi Richard:
> >
> > You're confusing a large number of topics which makes it hard to do history
> > right.
> >
> > Regarding host names -- Vint's given you the gist.  There was a text table
> > for hostnames, one host per line.  Hosts had an official name and could als
> o
> > have aliases.  It was managed by the SRI NIC.  If you had a host, you
> > registered your name with the NIC and they put it into the table.
> > When I joined the net in 1983 it took a bit under a week to get a host into
> > the table.
> >
> > The table was retrieved by FTPing it from the NIC.  We used a hardcoded
> > IP address (some folks started out by FTPing from a symbolic name [sri-nic]
> > but one day an editing error left the name out of the host table and then
> > people couldn't retrieve a new table!!).  To reduce the FTP burdens,
> > big organizations typically had one machine FTP the table from the NIC
> > and then had each machine within their organization grab a copy from the
> > internal machine.  Note the fact that hosts periodically got deleted by
> > partial transfers, software bugs, etc. is why many Internet protocols permi
> t
> > use of raw IP addresses.  It also explains why many old Internet folks
> > still remember the IP addresses of some machines (my first workstation
> > was bbn-loki at 128.89.1.178).
> >
> > Regarding maps -- they were compiled by the Network Operations Center at
> > BBN.  Frequency varied. At one time I think they were updated monthly.
> > Later every quarter.  They only showed ARPANET connectivity.  A selection
> > was published some years ago in Computer Communication Review (and I think
> > was put on-line by Chris Edmondson at UT).
> >
> > As the Internet took off, Mike Brescia at the NOC used to periodically put
> > together Internet maps, I think mostly to help NOC folks as they interacted
> > with the rest of the Net.  These maps were published for some years in the
> > IETF proceedings (www.ietf.org).  I also have some color versions made for
> > 35mm slides by BBN's art department.
> >
> > Thanks!
> >
> > Craig
> >
> >    
> >> I can track it in the RFCs back to 597, which is some sort of official
> >> list of all the hosts that were running at the time, and interestingly,
> >> gives notice of a move projected for MIT-MULTICS from one IMP to
> >> another. But it says it's "the latest network map" so naturally I'm
> >> curious about the first network map.
> >>
> >> On 1/19/2010 8:46 PM, Vint Cerf wrote:
> >>      
> >>> 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
> >>>>
> >>>>          
> >>>        
> >> -- 
> >> Richard Bennett
> >> Research Fellow
> >> Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
> >> Washington, DC
> >>      
> > ********************
> > Craig Partridge
> > Chief Scientist, BBN Technologies
> > E-mail: craig at aland.bbn.com or craig at bbn.com
> > Phone: +1 517 324 3425
> >    
> 
> -- 
> Richard Bennett
> Research Fellow
> Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
> Washington, DC
********************
Craig Partridge
Chief Scientist, BBN Technologies
E-mail: craig at aland.bbn.com or craig at bbn.com
Phone: +1 517 324 3425