[ih] Dot Com etc

[Vint Cerf]

Louis, thanks for reminding us about the interim use of .arpa until  
registration of names in the other 7 TLDs occurred. I'd forgotten  
about that. Later, .arpa was used for reverse lookup and other  
infrastructure mechanisms.

v

On Jan 20, 2010, at 6:05 PM, Louis Mamakos wrote:

> 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
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>
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