[ih] DNS History

[John Day]

At 18:14 -0800 2010/03/08, Dave Crocker wrote:
>On 3/8/2010 5:46 PM, John Day wrote:
>>>
>>>X.500 was a user name registration scheme, originally designed to
>>>lookup users, especially for email. It started with the premise that,
>>>done in scale, a human name is not unique so that other
>>
>>Actually, it wasn't.
>
>The key word was "originally".  That was the specific goal in the 
>initial design sessions I attended.
>
>Things evolve.  IPv6 started simple, too.  So did Internet Mail, the 
>Web, etc., etc.  Sometimes bloat sets in during initial discussion, 
>sometimes during design, sometimes after a decade of use.  It isn't 
>inevitable.  Perhaps.

Ah, yes, Dave attending one design session would certainly be 
definitive.  Whereas, I was probably in only 50-100+ X.500 related 
meetings from before it was even a Work Item or it was known as X.500 
and was the designated arbiter by SC21 on some of their more 
controversial issues.  But then what would I know?

>
>>>attributes would be needed to distinguish the target user. Since if
>>>flowed from X.400, the concept of a simple, global, unique email
>>>address was already a lost cause. (Your global address was
>>
>>Actually it didn't flow from X.400, it was just the same people. The
>>plan to a directory was in place from early on.
>
>It came directly from needing to find email addresses.  It was not 
>an accident that it was the same people.  They knew that X.400 
>addresses were unwieldy and they knew that the global scale of an 
>email service required some way of finding addresses.\

As I said, actually it didn't.  That was later as the scope expanded.

>
>(Odd historical note, given your citing him:  John White wrote an 
>early Arpanet NCP implementation for an IBM 360, at UC Santa 
>Barbara.  I've heard rumors that it was the first NCP that was 
>operational.)

Jack White was at SRI in the early days and was responsible for much 
of the NSW.

>
>>>relative to your provider, which led to some interesting business
>>>cards, for folks who had multiple providers.)
>>
>>But then since you were in all those meetings that reviewed their work,
>>you knew all of that didn't you?
>
>I included "earliest discussions" and "My first participation" with 
>the intent of constraining the scope of my comments.  These were the 
>formative meetings for the standards effort.

Really.  I don't remember seeing your name on any of the delegate 
lists representing the US.  Once again, I think you only perceived 
them to the be the formative discussions.  Discussions had been going 
on for some time.

>
>I've no idea what "all those meetings" refers to, particularly in 
>terms of reviewing the X.500 effort.

You do remember Hoyt Kesterson's participation in X.500?  Who do you 
think put him there?

Take care,
John

>d/
>--
>
>   Dave Crocker
>   Brandenburg InternetWorking
>   bbiw.net