[ih] Dot Com etc

[Louis Mamakos]

There was, of course, the .ARPA domain that came first.  One day, all of the hosts in the SRI-NIC's HOSTS.TXT file grew aliases with the .ARPA suffix.  For some period of time during the transition to the operational DNS, the NIC continued to add hosts with domain names (other than .ARPA) to the HOSTS.TXT file.

I suppose the real "flag day" for the DNS was when the HOSTS.TXT file stopped getting updated or distributed.

The HOSTS.TXT file also contained (classfull) network names as networks were allocated out of the IPv4 address space.  I don't think this capability was really ever reimplemented in the DNS, especially when CIDR and classless network prefxes came on the scene and you couldn't obviously identify the "network" number by examination.   Few programs really depended on this, and now we've got WHOIS and the like to bang against the registrars.

Louis Mamakos

On Jan 20, 2010, at 5:42 PM, Jack Haverty wrote:

> Hi Bob!
> 
> I also have the feeling that Jon put the list together, since as I
> recall he was the only one of us organized enough to deal with such
> things...
> 
> As to *why* that initial list was chosen, my recollection is that it
> simply reflected the demographics of the emerging "Internet community"
> at the time.  There were lots of governmental entities and lots of
> schools.  The "rest of world" were commercial, or companies.  
> 
> Plus it was likely that someone from each TLD subgroup would step up and
> volunteer to be the coordinator/arbitrator of name etiquette within that
> subgroup.  You couldn't have a TLD unless there was someone willing to
> manage it.   
> 
> The nascent Internet was very US-centric, again reflecting the
> demographics.  Gov meant US government.  Com was US companies, weighted
> toward government contractors such as BBN or Linkabit - I can't recall
> any non-US companies being involved until later in the game.   
> 
> I think .com originally was derived from "company" rather than
> "commercial".  The .com's weren't thought of as "businesses" in the
> sense of places that consumers go to buy things.  They were companies
> doing government contract work.  The Internet was not chartered to
> interconnect businesses - it was a military command-and-control
> prototype network, being built by educational, governmental, and
> contractors.  If anybody had suggested that businesses were to be
> included, it would have raised flotillas of red flags in the
> administrative ranks of government and PTTs.  Hence .com -- not .biz.
> 
> I don't recall anybody ever thinking we were creating an organizational
> structure to encompass hundreds of millions of entities covering the
> entire planet in support of all human activities.  And it certainly
> wasn't supposed to last for 30+ years, even as an experiment.  It just
> happened to turn out that way.
> 
> IIRC, there weren't any major debates or counterproposals or such about
> TLDs.  The TLD list just wasn't that big a deal (at the time).  The
> Internet was an *experiment* which, like all experiments, was supposed
> to end.  CCITT, ISO, and such organizations were inventing the official
> technologies for the future of data communications.  We know now how
> that turned out   Whatever TLD list and such was used in the Internet
> wasn't supposed to last long.  So a specific logistical decision like
> the TLD list wasn't all that important - at the time.
> 
> I agree that whatever discussion happened was almost certainly carried
> out mostly on the email lists which served as the primary way for
> everybody to interact between quarterly meetings, and then Jon and crew
> most likely put the initial list together, and there wasn't any real
> opposition so it became real.  
> 
> It's very difficult to identify who "invented" anything in those days.
> There was lots of discussions, ideas, and strawmen passed around in
> emails and then eventually somebody wrote the document or wrote the code
> to capture the "rough consensus" of the discussion.
> 
> /Jack
> 
> 
> On Wed, 2010-01-20 at 13:18 -0800, Bob Braden wrote:
>> 
>> internet-history-request at postel.org wrote:
>> 
>>> 
>>>> Does anyone know why .com; .edu and .gov were chosen? I know it seems
>>>> simple, but why .com instead of something like .biz?
>>> 
>> 
>> I recall seeing those TLD names on Jon's white board at the time. I feel 
>> quite certain that they came out of Jon's head, but were ratified by 
>> discussions with Paul.
>> 
>> Bob Braden
>> 
>> 
>> 
>