From woody at pch.net  Mon Feb  1 02:33:16 2021
From: woody at pch.net (Bill Woodcock)
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2021 11:33:16 +0100
Subject: [ih] Funny how things work out
In-Reply-To: <b6dae3ed-0aa5-62d1-79f7-e4e0f9a8599a@gmail.com>
References: <b6dae3ed-0aa5-62d1-79f7-e4e0f9a8599a@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <509FD2CF-33E5-416F-B312-6E296E94A8BE@pch.net>

Ok, a bit of ranting, riding on the coat-tails of Brian?s post.  (Hi, Brian!)

> On Feb 1, 2021, at 3:58 AM, Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> Oddly enough, I only noticed today that .cern has been a TLD since 2014. I'm amazed they bothered.

.CERN is a brand TLD, no different than .FEDEX or .GUCCI.  As such, having it offers CERN several benefits:

 - Brand protection (someone else can?t abuse it to CERN?s detriment)
 - URL shortening (users don?t have to guess and type .ch at the end)
 - Shortened DNSSEC trust hierarchy

The URL shortening is a bit of a mixed bag, because of the ?only delegation records at the top level? rule.  I?ll freely admit that I didn?t have time to pay close enough attention to even realize that such a rule was being formulated, at the time, so I don?t know whether it was driven through by the browser vendors (who would have wanted to keep camping on their ?keyword? usurpation) or the registry services providers (who had captured the process), or by ICANN (who presumably wouldn?t have wanted to process more root-zone changes, because that would be work).  It?s _possible_ that there?s a technical reason that?s just never occurred to me, but I?ve been doing DNS professionally for thirty-five years now, and there?s certainly no technical reason that?s readily apparent.  Only entrenched-bad-business-model ones.  So, ?www.cern? is longer than ?cern.ch? but both are longer than simply ?cern?.

If anyone can shed any light on how the ?only delegations? rule came to be, I?d love to hear the history there.

Although this is less of an issue for CERN, for a lot of brands, the $200k is a drop in the bucket of their annual brand-protection budget, so well worthwhile in and of itself, even if the brand TLD never gets used.  Simply keeping it out of the hands of counterfeiters, con artists, and critics is significant value already.

To my thinking, by far the biggest value is in shortening the DNSSEC signature chain, reducing the number of security externalities ?above? you in the chain. With the glaring exception of the RZM contract, ICANN does an otherwise-very-reasonable job of securing the root zone.  Being able to disintermediate one?s own key management process and ICANN?s is of huge value if you actually depend upon the ability to create TLS connections between yourself and your customers, as in the case of a retail bank, for instance.  Even more so if you need to be able to demonstrate to a regulatory authority?s auditor how your DANE implementation works, and that it doesn?t depend on un-auditable, proprietary, black boxes outside of your control, in the hands of a TLD administrator who isn?t subject to audit or public scrutiny.

> The reason CERN was originally .cern.ch is that in about 1987, when we were a central point in European academia, in particular operating an important mail interchange gateway, someone in my team wrote to IANA asking for the TLD ".cern".** Jon replied very nicely explaining why this was a silly idea. I don't have those emails, regrettably, but I believe that he suggested .cern.int, although .int was still a bit of a political football then. We opted for .cern.ch and I believe we also got .cern.fr, which we never used, although our computer centre was on the French side of the border. So, some 25 years later one of my successors at CERN decided that Jon was wrong, and ICANN agreed.

As you point out, ICANN is powerfully financially motivated to agree.  That doesn?t make it a bad idea, by any means (just as Jon was powerfully motivated to disagree, having limited time and no financial incentive) that lack of regulation, lack of self-moderation, and lack of discipline-by-competition has allowed ICANN to charge prices that are ridiculously large by comparison with the work they put in.  The significant work, of course, is done by the root operators, who are not compensated for it.  My position (which may admittedly be elitist, and which I?m happy to be argued out of) is that root operators should not be compensated, because I really don?t want to see that also turned into an idiotic scramble of money-grubbing idiots who can?t keep a server running, like most of the rest of the DNS has, now.

The problem for CERN is the same as the problem for most brands which have no particular association with geography?  while a Volkswagen or an HSBC has national subdivisions with national customer-bases and specific language and regulatory support in each, the same is not true for CERN, nor for Intel, nor Disney, nor Pfizer.  The use of .COM as a catch-all is a poor substitute (for everyone other than Verisign) for a large population of TLDs, and it fails where CERN is concerned.  While ?.CH? or ?.FR? are only three additional characters to type and transmit and store, the real burden is on users who have to guess, perhaps with very little context, which of hundreds of TLDs the brand might be domiciled in.  Or, it puts the burden on the brand to register in every (or a very large number of) TLDs, which created its own exploitative market-of-many-monopolies.

So while it?s annoying to me to see ICANN arbitrarily rewarded for work that I?m doing, I don?t think I should be paid for that work, because I believe that would create perverse incentives; and I recognize that, no matter how fun it would be to have my own stable of vanity TLDs, rent-extraction and market forces are a perfectly reasonable way to constrain consumption of a constrained resource.  Because although at 2,000 TLDs we?re four orders of magnitude away from the threshold at which any real work would start to be involved, we?d get there quickly if there were a three-order-of-magnitude price drop.  Which would still more than adequately pay for the work involved.  The question, then, is, ?where should the money go??  In the Westphalian world we?ve got national governments imposing taxes and using it for common goods.  In the Internet world, we depend on philanthropy to cover the costs of common goods, and that doesn?t scale well in boom times, when wet-behind-the-ears libertarian techbros are too noob to really understand that they?re actually free-riders taking from infrastructure others are paying for. Ayn Rand has a lot to answer for.  Governments do a worse and worse job apportioning tax money to things people actually care about, the larger they get, and the more distant they get from people.  Cities are reasonably good at fixing potholes and operating schools and fire departments.  States and provinces somewhat less so.  Nations, abysmal.  So a global Internet government to redistribute disincentivization fees toward maintenance of common infrastructure is a bad idea, because it would be abused even worse than similar things at national levels are.

I dunno.

> I just looked at the current state of the TLD registry. It's (IMNSHO) horrible. Counting up, there are the following numbers of TLDs of various types:
> Generic 1247, Sponsored 14, Country Code 316, Infrastructure 1.

I don?t see any burning need to subdivide .ARPA.  It would be nice if registration restrictions were actually enforced on .NET, so you could tell that it was someone with an ASN, rather than someone with an MLM scheme.

I think the number of country code domains is very appropriately outsourced to ISO and their processes, and I haven?t seen any huge bottleneck there, having observed that process close-up several times, for .TL and .SS.  So, I think the number of ccTLDs is approximately correct, modulo a few at the edges that are still getting resolved, like Kosovo, Abkhazia, Somaliland, South Ossetia, etc.  But, let?s say that it?s within about 2%-3% of being correct.

The ?sponsored? category is an artifact of ICANN doing TLDs in tranches (to create artificial scarcity and drive up prices) rather than operating as a continuous process (which would be boring, practical, and utterly out-of-character for the jackpot mentality of the commercial DNS business that control ICANN).  It?s an artificial distinction used to grandfather in some of the gTLDs and the first-round Twomey-era new TLDs.  It certainly had its problems as a process, but would have gotten better if principles of continuous improvement had been applied.  But unfortunately approximately zero lessons were learned and applied to the second round.  Sorry, I mean zero lessons about running a process well.  Only lessons about how to maximize revenue for registry services operators were learned and applied.  So, I don?t think there?s any correct number for the ?sponsored? category, because it?s an artificial category which encompasses both original TLDs, industry TLDs, geographic TLDs, and cultural TLDs in a grab-bag of retroactive redefinition.

Which leaves everything else thrown into the ?generic? grab-bag, which doesn?t make a lot of sense to me, either.

I think geographic and cultural TLDs are very important, and aren?t given enough space to grow.  In the same way that a small country-code can provide excellent service and create community online, because it?s not forced to tithe, things like .NYC and .?? and .????? and .BZH could be creating vibrant online community.  But the bottom fifty rungs having been knocked out of the ladder by those who?ve managed to climb it already makes it kind of hard for them to get started.  Geographic and cultural TLDs have been derided by the registry services providers as ?failures? because they fail to contribute enough to the registry services providers bottom line.  Since that?s the only yardstick that gets any credence at ICANN, they get discounted and discouraged.

I think brand TLDs are really important as well, because brand-owning businesses are responsible for the vast majority of the flow of people?s money over the Internet, and if they?re not allowed to protect those flows (because that would either create work and, by implication, liability for registrars and registry services providers, or, worse for them, disintermediate them) law-and-order is diminished, and trust is diminished, and people won?t get the value out of the Internet that we all signed up to create.  Brand TLDs aren?t about protecting companies, they?re about protecting the customers of companies against MITM attacks of all kinds.  So the more companies have brand TLDs of their own, the better that protection can be, and the more law-and-order and trust we can have in the Internet.

The truly generic TLDs, like .PLUMBING and .DRUGS and .INSURANCE and so forth?  I dunno?  I guess they?re a much more reasonable way of categorizing a lot of things than geographic coincidence is?  Particularly for things that don?t have a strong geographic locus, yet aren?t centralized enough to manage a brand TLD?  Star Trek fan clubs, for instance, might quite reasonable organize as STARTREK.FANS, when it wouldn?t be reasonable to imagine that they?d somehow get it together to, collectively, globally, operate a brand TLD.  And there are brands that include, as their concluding word, a generic which distinguishes them from other brands in other fields, or which are otherwise more recognizable to people with a distinguishing generic suffix, and I think that?s another excellent use of generic TLDs: FTD.FLOWERS and FTD.MAGAZINE for instance.  This kinda seems to me like an area where capitalists could run wild without doing much damage to anything that mattered to many people. But again, as with geographic and cultural TLDs, I think having high barriers to entry doesn?t serve actual users well.  Auctions, the mechanism ICANN actually uses to sort out competing interests in generic TLDs, seem perfectly appropriate to me here; I just strongly believe that ICANN shouldn?t be the interested beneficiary of the auction.  It would be better to burn the money than to incentivize ICANN to drive these into bidding wars.

> Back in early 1998, the IAB wrote to Ira Magaziner in response to the Green Paper that led to ICANN. Among other things, we said "On the other hand, a very large increase in the total number of gTLDs (say to thousands) would lead us into technically unknown territory." Are we there yet?

Nowhere near.  We have about 2,000 today.  Tens of millions of delegations are easily handled at a zone cut.  Hundreds of millions would be significant work, but that would also be the point at which everybody in the world who wanted one or more vanity TLDs could have them.  A flat space.  At which point users would _assume_ no hierarchy existed, and traversing hierarchy would no longer be a useful way of finding things, so that would be usability/value destroyed.  So what?s the right number?  Millions?  Somewhere between millions and low tens-of-millions?  I think the ?what?s the right price? question has been pretty well worked out?  About $10/year.  Instinct makes me want to say that TLDs should be more expensive than second-levels, which should be more expensive than third-levels, but that may just be some little bit of artificial-scarcity holdout in my brain.  The longer the domain name, the more expensive it is for me to serve it.  I can serve three TLDs for the cost of serving one third-level, more or less.  So that argument leads in the opposite direction than most people expect, I think.

                                -Bill

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From touch at strayalpha.com  Mon Feb  1 03:28:25 2021
From: touch at strayalpha.com (Joe Touch)
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2021 03:28:25 -0800
Subject: [ih] Funny how things work out
In-Reply-To: <509FD2CF-33E5-416F-B312-6E296E94A8BE@pch.net>
References: <509FD2CF-33E5-416F-B312-6E296E94A8BE@pch.net>
Message-ID: <262C9E24-6B12-4595-831B-2A7299D4043A@strayalpha.com>



> On Feb 1, 2021, at 2:34 AM, Bill Woodcock via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> ...
> While ?.CH? or ?.FR? are only three additional characters to type and transmit and store, the real burden is on users who have to guess, perhaps with very little context, which of hundreds of TLDs the brand might be domiciled in....

DNS names are useful when memorable long enough to be typed in. They need not guessable. The DNS is not a search engine. 

Joe


From dhc at dcrocker.net  Mon Feb  1 07:23:32 2021
From: dhc at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker)
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2021 07:23:32 -0800
Subject: [ih] Funny how things work out
In-Reply-To: <b6dae3ed-0aa5-62d1-79f7-e4e0f9a8599a@gmail.com>
References: <b6dae3ed-0aa5-62d1-79f7-e4e0f9a8599a@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <602ecf76-3649-724b-eac7-23d6d1c44e17@dcrocker.net>

On 1/31/2021 6:58 PM, Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history wrote:
> Back in early 1998, the IAB wrote to Ira Magaziner in response to the Green Paper that led to ICANN. Among other things, we said "On the other hand, a very large increase in the total number of gTLDs (say to thousands) would lead us into technically unknown territory." Are we there yet?

The pre-ICANN effort of the IAHC included a survey of various DNS 
experts.  While there was no consensus about the technical limits of the 
DNS or its operation, there was a pretty solid view that a couple of 
thousand TLDs would not be a technical problem.

The issue that seemed far more significant were the political and 
administrative barriers, which is why the IAHC recommendation suggested 
a modest start with 6 TLDs.

d/

-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net


From dhc at dcrocker.net  Mon Feb  1 07:31:52 2021
From: dhc at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker)
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2021 07:31:52 -0800
Subject: [ih] Funny how things work out
In-Reply-To: <509FD2CF-33E5-416F-B312-6E296E94A8BE@pch.net>
References: <b6dae3ed-0aa5-62d1-79f7-e4e0f9a8599a@gmail.com>
 <509FD2CF-33E5-416F-B312-6E296E94A8BE@pch.net>
Message-ID: <97c44268-10ea-6352-bfab-db58ff23d827@dcrocker.net>

On 2/1/2021 2:33 AM, Bill Woodcock via Internet-history wrote:
>   - Brand protection (someone else can?t abuse it to CERN?s detriment)

The appeal of protective acquisition is obvious but it's field efficacy 
is not.  Brand strings can occur in too many ways.  And then there are 
cousin strings.


>   - URL shortening (users don?t have to guess and type .ch at the end)

Again, a reasonable, localized bit of optimization but with no 
demonstration of human factors efficacy.  The 'benefit' needs to be 
considered in the context of an average person's overall use of domain 
names.


>   - Shortened DNSSEC trust hierarchy

In the absence of widespread adoption and use of DNSSec, this, too, is 
only a theoretical benefit.  It makes sense in the abstract but I 
believe there is no experience in the wild that shows this is a 
meaningful benefit.



d/
-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net


From jack at 3kitty.org  Mon Feb  1 10:30:14 2021
From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2021 10:30:14 -0800
Subject: [ih] Funny how things work out
In-Reply-To: <602ecf76-3649-724b-eac7-23d6d1c44e17@dcrocker.net>
References: <b6dae3ed-0aa5-62d1-79f7-e4e0f9a8599a@gmail.com>
 <602ecf76-3649-724b-eac7-23d6d1c44e17@dcrocker.net>
Message-ID: <28a9425e-3bc8-212a-c851-c8636115b8a5@3kitty.org>

Interesting discussion of the history of Network Naming as it evolved
from a practical technical solution to a problem (JonP got tired of
having every new computer name have to go through him, and DNS
introduced a mechanism for delegation), to a scheme for making money, to
a battleground for things like "brand protection".?? Yes, funny how
things work out....

That got me thinking about how all that evolution looked, when viewed
from the Users' perspective rather than from Technology Land.? What does
the Internet History of Naming look like, as it has been seen by the
Users of The Internet?

I've been Using names since the early ARPANET days, when the file at
SRI-NIC helped me remember whether my host was MITDM or MIT-DM et al.

Fast forward to today, and I no longer have a clue what name to use to
find what I want online, and the proliferation of TLDs and explosion of
names isn't helping.

I'm wondering if, from the Users' perspective, the DNS mechanisms have
simply become unusable and irrelevant.

To take a concrete example... A few years ago I was planning a home
project and a friend highly recommended a particular builder - "Talon
Construction".?? Tried talonconstruction.com, but no luck.?? That name
is for sale, for only $3800!?? That's a big investment for a small
builder, maybe better put into new tools and equipment.

So I tried http://talon-construction.com, and sure enough there it was,
complete with pictures of projects they did, and all the usual marketing
material.? Very professional, ... looks like a good company to use.??
Then I noticed one small problem - the phone number looked strange.?
Digging around a bit in "About Us", I found their address -- somewhere
in Maryland.? But I'm in California....??

So, what else could it be.? Maybe talonconstruction.net??? Nope, they
are on the net, but based in North Carolina.?? Maybe
talonconstruction.builder?? Nope -- "We can?t connect to the server at
talon-construction.builder."? Maybe builder is not a TLD?? Aargh, this
is silly.?? When did we last get a Yellow Pages...?

Another example -- we frequent a local restaurant called Asian Garden,
reminded of its name every time we drive by the building.?? So where is
it online?? Asian Garden seems unlikely to be a unique name for a
restaurant.??? Try asiangarden.com...that brings up a web page that just
says "4020"??? Maybe asiangarden.net?? No, that's a company that sells
asian plants, and they don't say where they are but appear to be located
somewhere in the Central timezone - not right.? Maybe asiangarden.us -
yes!? That's a chinese restaurant...but it's in New Jersey.?? Grmmph.

So what do Users actually do now to find a website, if the DNS mechanism
is so useless?

Personally, I suspect I do what everyone else does.?? I use search
engines, comprehensive ones like Google and Duckduckgo, but also more
targeted ones like Yelp.?? I also rely on my browser history - e.g., if
I type "asian" into the browser, my local Asian Garden pops right up
(it's asiangardengv.com BTW).? same thing with "talon".? I also use
bookmarks, but struggle with the same problem that DNS has of how to
organize everything hierarchically.? I'm also using "notes", e.g.,
Google Keep to keep track of websites and sync to multiple devices.?
Google Maps is also helpful since it shows local businesses and leads
you to their websites.?? I'd really love to see some new browser
mechanisms that did a bit of integration of all this data.? So I could
do things like ask for "that sushi restaurant we really liked when we
visited here two years ago".

So, as a user, I don't really care any more what the DNS "web address"
is, whether asiangarden.gv or 19876.weirdname.whatever.something.?? I
never remember those, and never type them in anymore.

That's why I'm wondering if DNS and TLDs and all the name structure is
worth all the trouble anymore.? It's still useful as a level of
indirection to separate "names" from IP addresses that may change.?? But
as a mnemonic for Users, it's devolved over time to become useless.? At
least for me...maybe other Users too?

I wonder when the "brand defenders" will realize this...funny how things
work out.

/Jack Haverty



>



From dhc at dcrocker.net  Mon Feb  1 10:58:17 2021
From: dhc at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker)
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2021 10:58:17 -0800
Subject: [ih] Funny how things work out
In-Reply-To: <28a9425e-3bc8-212a-c851-c8636115b8a5@3kitty.org>
References: <b6dae3ed-0aa5-62d1-79f7-e4e0f9a8599a@gmail.com>
 <602ecf76-3649-724b-eac7-23d6d1c44e17@dcrocker.net>
 <28a9425e-3bc8-212a-c851-c8636115b8a5@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <e40b0d96-eed9-d0b1-7695-842c68b4ed67@dcrocker.net>

On 2/1/2021 10:30 AM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
> Fast forward to today, and I no longer have a clue what name to use to
> find what I want online, and the proliferation of TLDs and explosion of
> names isn't helping.
> 
> I'm wondering if, from the Users' perspective, the DNS mechanisms have
> simply become unusable and irrelevant.

The model you describe is for searching.  The DNS doesn't do that.  It 
does lookup. As already noted, there's a basic difference between being 
able to guess a string versus being able to remember a string.  There's 
also a difference between longer-term vs. shorter-term remembering.

The mnemoics of domain names is useful for shorter-term remembering and 
sometimes useful for longer-term remembering.  Since it isn't intended 
for searching, there shouldn't be any surprise that it's terrible for 
that function.  Always has been.


> So, as a user, I don't really care any more what the DNS "web address"
> is, whether asiangarden.gv or 19876.weirdname.whatever.something.?? I
> never remember those, and never type them in anymore.
> 
> That's why I'm wondering if DNS and TLDs and all the name structure is
> worth all the trouble anymore.? It's still useful as a level of
> indirection to separate "names" from IP addresses that may change.?? But
> as a mnemonic for Users, it's devolved over time to become useless.? At
> least for me...maybe other Users too?
> 
> I wonder when the "brand defenders" will realize this...funny how things
> work out.

What you describe has always been true.  The problem has been the 
re-application of long-standin (pre-digital) brand protection models to 
this very different world.

d/

-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net


From brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com  Mon Feb  1 11:47:37 2021
From: brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com (Brian E Carpenter)
Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2021 08:47:37 +1300
Subject: [ih] Funny how things work out
In-Reply-To: <602ecf76-3649-724b-eac7-23d6d1c44e17@dcrocker.net>
References: <b6dae3ed-0aa5-62d1-79f7-e4e0f9a8599a@gmail.com>
 <602ecf76-3649-724b-eac7-23d6d1c44e17@dcrocker.net>
Message-ID: <86a176d0-d476-ce7a-7528-965d19dce22b@gmail.com>

On 02-Feb-21 04:23, Dave Crocker wrote:
> On 1/31/2021 6:58 PM, Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history wrote:
>> Back in early 1998, the IAB wrote to Ira Magaziner in response to the Green Paper that led to ICANN. Among other things, we said "On the other hand, a very large increase in the total number of gTLDs (say to thousands) would lead us into technically unknown territory." Are we there yet?
> 
> The pre-ICANN effort of the IAHC included a survey of various DNS 
> experts.  While there was no consensus about the technical limits of the 
> DNS or its operation, there was a pretty solid view that a couple of 
> thousand TLDs would not be a technical problem.

Yes. The IAB statement was intentionally both vague and cautious. After all,
999,000 is still "thousands".
 
> The issue that seemed far more significant were the political and 
> administrative barriers, which is why the IAHC recommendation suggested 
> a modest start with 6 TLDs.

My personal preference was none.

    Brian




From paf at frobbit.se  Mon Feb  1 12:21:34 2021
From: paf at frobbit.se (Patrik =?utf-8?b?RsOkbHRzdHLDtm0=?=)
Date: Mon, 01 Feb 2021 21:21:34 +0100
Subject: [ih] Funny how things work out
In-Reply-To: <86a176d0-d476-ce7a-7528-965d19dce22b@gmail.com>
References: <b6dae3ed-0aa5-62d1-79f7-e4e0f9a8599a@gmail.com>
 <602ecf76-3649-724b-eac7-23d6d1c44e17@dcrocker.net>
 <86a176d0-d476-ce7a-7528-965d19dce22b@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <A42B7AA1-71DC-4231-90D2-88BFD7BE0BCA@frobbit.se>

On 1 Feb 2021, at 20:47, Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history wrote:

>> The pre-ICANN effort of the IAHC included a survey of various DNS
>> experts.  While there was no consensus about the technical limits of the
>> DNS or its operation, there was a pretty solid view that a couple of
>> thousand TLDs would not be a technical problem.
>
> Yes. The IAB statement was intentionally both vague and cautious. After all, 999,000 is still "thousands".

Note that there is a difference between the number of TLDs and the rate by which they are added. In many discussions I have been involved in, it is the rate that scares more than a number. We know running a zone with "lots of entries" is not such a big problem. We know how to do that. Also sort of how to handle high rate of changes to such a zone.

But, for the root zone, going too fast from "small, with small number of changes per time unit" to "a large zones with large number of changes", is a move that scares at least me. Specifically after looking into the issues quite a bit. It scares me a lot more than the end game. The root zone is used in many many ways today that is built upon the assumption it is small and do not change often.

   Patrik
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From jack at 3kitty.org  Mon Feb  1 12:55:42 2021
From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2021 12:55:42 -0800
Subject: [ih] Funny how things work out
In-Reply-To: <e40b0d96-eed9-d0b1-7695-842c68b4ed67@dcrocker.net>
References: <b6dae3ed-0aa5-62d1-79f7-e4e0f9a8599a@gmail.com>
 <602ecf76-3649-724b-eac7-23d6d1c44e17@dcrocker.net>
 <28a9425e-3bc8-212a-c851-c8636115b8a5@3kitty.org>
 <e40b0d96-eed9-d0b1-7695-842c68b4ed67@dcrocker.net>
Message-ID: <7a962efe-c130-fbc2-d3ac-befae1324fd3@3kitty.org>

Hi Dave,

I agree that the DNS was never intended as a searching mechanism.? It
has always done "lookup", converting strings into IP addresses.??

That's a view from the Technology side.? I was thinking as an end User,
where the History of the Internet looks somewhat different.

>From the User side, DNS also, at first, provided two other mechanisms
useful for Users - Delegation and Organization.? Delegation solved Jon's
problem, spreading out the work for managing the namespace to multiple
people and organizations.? Organization provided a means of structuring
the namespace so that it made some sense to Users.

As a User, I knew that a school site likely ended in .edu, a company
site in .com, a US government site in .gov, etc.? So instead of
"searching", a User knowing that old simple DNS organization of the name
space could guess that MIT was mit.edu, UCLA was ucla.edu, yahoo was
yahoo.com, Social Security was ssa.gov, etc.?? Names were predictable,
guessing was reliable enough.

That organizational structure broke as the Internet grew, and name
collisions became common (like my examples).? The growth worldwide made
the US-centric domain choices less palatable, and the explosion of TLDs
has made it almost impossible to understand or remember the structure of
the namespace or the "name" of a particular site.?? Guessing and
predicting has become much less successful for the Users, and
remembering, even short-term, almost impossible.

So, IMHO, DNS still does an admirable job of maintaining and operating a
distributed database translating between "names" and "addresses", and
provides the mechanisms needed for delegation.? But its utility to Users
has decayed over time as the Internet grew.? It's now a mechanism for
translating between two obscure (to Users) character strings, one of
which (IP addresses) they rarely see.?? DNS mechanisms are still an
important part of the internal machinery of the 'net, but DNS names seem
no longer very relevant as part of the "Internet UI".?? Names are just
an arbitrary stringofcharacters that you have little need to remember or
type.

Since Marketing cares mostly about Customers (Users), that's what leads
me to wonder when the marketing forces will recognize that paying lots
of money to "protect the brand" in the DNS namespace is still worthwhile
-- except to the companies charging for the naming rights.

/Jack


On 2/1/21 10:58 AM, Dave Crocker wrote:
> On 2/1/2021 10:30 AM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
>> Fast forward to today, and I no longer have a clue what name to use to
>> find what I want online, and the proliferation of TLDs and explosion of
>> names isn't helping.
>>
>> I'm wondering if, from the Users' perspective, the DNS mechanisms have
>> simply become unusable and irrelevant.
>
> The model you describe is for searching.? The DNS doesn't do that.? It
> does lookup. As already noted, there's a basic difference between
> being able to guess a string versus being able to remember a string.?
> There's also a difference between longer-term vs. shorter-term
> remembering.
>
> The mnemoics of domain names is useful for shorter-term remembering
> and sometimes useful for longer-term remembering.? Since it isn't
> intended for searching, there shouldn't be any surprise that it's
> terrible for that function.? Always has been.
>
>
>> So, as a user, I don't really care any more what the DNS "web address"
>> is, whether asiangarden.gv or 19876.weirdname.whatever.something.?? I
>> never remember those, and never type them in anymore.
>>
>> That's why I'm wondering if DNS and TLDs and all the name structure is
>> worth all the trouble anymore.? It's still useful as a level of
>> indirection to separate "names" from IP addresses that may change.?? But
>> as a mnemonic for Users, it's devolved over time to become useless.? At
>> least for me...maybe other Users too?
>>
>> I wonder when the "brand defenders" will realize this...funny how things
>> work out.
>
> What you describe has always been true.? The problem has been the
> re-application of long-standin (pre-digital) brand protection models
> to this very different world.
>
> d/
>



From cabo at tzi.org  Mon Feb  1 13:06:03 2021
From: cabo at tzi.org (Carsten Bormann)
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2021 22:06:03 +0100
Subject: [ih] Funny how things work out
In-Reply-To: <7a962efe-c130-fbc2-d3ac-befae1324fd3@3kitty.org>
References: <b6dae3ed-0aa5-62d1-79f7-e4e0f9a8599a@gmail.com>
 <602ecf76-3649-724b-eac7-23d6d1c44e17@dcrocker.net>
 <28a9425e-3bc8-212a-c851-c8636115b8a5@3kitty.org>
 <e40b0d96-eed9-d0b1-7695-842c68b4ed67@dcrocker.net>
 <7a962efe-c130-fbc2-d3ac-befae1324fd3@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <4EE91C1B-8AB4-48AC-9029-8FDAD15F2E67@tzi.org>

DNS names also play one additional role:

They are used in certificates to stand for an end system (really: organizational) identity.

Users are supposed to look at their browsers? address lines and verify that they are talking to the right site before they give up their credit card numbers, passwords etc.  Browsers have started supporting this by hiding any other part of the URI to various levels (greying out, completely hiding).  Browsers have also started torpedoing more reliable forms of identity checking, such as company names in EV (extended validation) certificates.

That check of course requires that the users can understand the DNS name and detect a fake (e.g., typo-based) DNS name.

How do I know that I get a valid firefox version from getfirefox.com and not from firefox.download (yes, that domain name is available!?)?

Gr??e, Carsten



From touch at strayalpha.com  Mon Feb  1 13:08:32 2021
From: touch at strayalpha.com (Joseph Touch)
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2021 13:08:32 -0800
Subject: [ih] Funny how things work out
In-Reply-To: <e40b0d96-eed9-d0b1-7695-842c68b4ed67@dcrocker.net>
References: <b6dae3ed-0aa5-62d1-79f7-e4e0f9a8599a@gmail.com>
 <602ecf76-3649-724b-eac7-23d6d1c44e17@dcrocker.net>
 <28a9425e-3bc8-212a-c851-c8636115b8a5@3kitty.org>
 <e40b0d96-eed9-d0b1-7695-842c68b4ed67@dcrocker.net>
Message-ID: <E5915EBD-D84D-410E-92C3-08E57AD0BA11@strayalpha.com>



> On Feb 1, 2021, at 10:58 AM, Dave Crocker via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> On 2/1/2021 10:30 AM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
>> Fast forward to today, and I no longer have a clue what name to use to
>> find what I want online, and the proliferation of TLDs and explosion of
>> names isn't helping.
>> I'm wondering if, from the Users' perspective, the DNS mechanisms have
>> simply become unusable and irrelevant.
> 
> The model you describe is for searching.  The DNS doesn't do that.  It does lookup. As already noted, there's a basic difference between being able to guess a string versus being able to remember a string. There's also a difference between longer-term vs. shorter-term remembering.

As an aside, Jon had tried to reserve the single-letter .com names (a.com <http://a.com/>, b.com <http://b.com/>, etc.) for a related reason. I think his idea was that, at some point, all DNS names in .com would be randomly one-time assigned to one of these 26 bins, as would all future requests. 

This served a few purposes:
	- undercutting the ?guessable? nature of .com names
		thus forcing its use as intended for remembering only
	- undercutting the assumption that .com names had to be copyright-like unique
		thus allowing multiple assignments for the same name

I.e., if there are 26 different versions of ford.X.com <http://ford.x.com/>, then nobody would care so much about whether someone else had it assigned first. 

Finally, if no single organization could own more than one letter?d variant, then it would undercut the artificial market for name-squatting and reselling.

It remains, IMO, a good idea, if we could ever somehow force it to happen.

Joe



From touch at strayalpha.com  Mon Feb  1 13:11:56 2021
From: touch at strayalpha.com (Joseph Touch)
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2021 13:11:56 -0800
Subject: [ih] Funny how things work out
In-Reply-To: <28a9425e-3bc8-212a-c851-c8636115b8a5@3kitty.org>
References: <b6dae3ed-0aa5-62d1-79f7-e4e0f9a8599a@gmail.com>
 <602ecf76-3649-724b-eac7-23d6d1c44e17@dcrocker.net>
 <28a9425e-3bc8-212a-c851-c8636115b8a5@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <23C2D855-F90E-4C40-94BA-1F0981E7AA45@strayalpha.com>



> On Feb 1, 2021, at 10:30 AM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> I'm wondering if, from the Users' perspective, the DNS mechanisms have
> simply become unusable and irrelevant.

FWIW, on this point, IMO, they remain useful as originally intended:

	a way to decouple addresses from names

This enables location-dependent resolution, fan-out to replicas, and provider portability. 

The other reason - human ?rememberable?, is much less relevant given search engines, though it does remain THE critical way we know whether a site is being spoofed (i.e., two steps: 1) is the DNS name the one from the ad/email/etc, 2) is it signed).

Joe



From dhc at dcrocker.net  Mon Feb  1 13:19:30 2021
From: dhc at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker)
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2021 13:19:30 -0800
Subject: [ih] Funny how things work out
In-Reply-To: <7a962efe-c130-fbc2-d3ac-befae1324fd3@3kitty.org>
References: <b6dae3ed-0aa5-62d1-79f7-e4e0f9a8599a@gmail.com>
 <602ecf76-3649-724b-eac7-23d6d1c44e17@dcrocker.net>
 <28a9425e-3bc8-212a-c851-c8636115b8a5@3kitty.org>
 <e40b0d96-eed9-d0b1-7695-842c68b4ed67@dcrocker.net>
 <7a962efe-c130-fbc2-d3ac-befae1324fd3@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <afe99600-95b8-6fe4-4311-c31b14d20044@dcrocker.net>

On 2/1/2021 12:55 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
> Hi Dave,
> 
> I agree that the DNS was never intended as a searching mechanism.? It
> has always done "lookup", converting strings into IP addresses.
> 
> That's a view from the Technology side.? I was thinking as an end User,
> where the History of the Internet looks somewhat different.

While users often misunderstand exact lookup from approximate search, I 
think the issue has always been present.  I don't think there is 
anything different now vs. 30 years ago, regarding this point.


>  From the User side, DNS also, at first, provided two other mechanisms
> useful for Users - Delegation and Organization.? Delegation solved Jon's
> problem, spreading out the work for managing the namespace to multiple
> people and organizations.? Organization provided a means of structuring
> the namespace so that it made some sense to Users.

I'd distinguish administration (assignment) from operation (query) and 
note that your observation about delegation and organization applies to 
each.  Separately...


> As a User, I knew that a school site likely ended in .edu, a company
> site in .com, a US government site in .gov, etc.? So instead of
> "searching", a User knowing that old simple DNS organization of the name
> space could guess that MIT was mit.edu, UCLA was ucla.edu, yahoo was
> yahoo.com, Social Security was ssa.gov, etc.?? Names were predictable,
> guessing was reliable enough.

edu had rigorous enforcement, but with problematic interpretation, as I 
recall.  mil and gov, were straightforward and firm, albeit ethnocentric.

com, net and org were never rigorously enforced. So they provided a 
somewhat useful heuristic, but not nearly as good as people tended to think.


> That organizational structure broke as the Internet grew, and name
> collisions became common (like my examples).  

I got a personal domain name about 25 years ago.  crocker.com/net/org 
were all already taken and not by Steve.  So we've been in this scaling 
artifact ever since the Internet went mass-market.  By some metrics, 
that is longer than a human generation.


>  But its utility to Users
> has decayed over time as the Internet grew. 

To the extent it ever had the attribute or search utility you are 
describing, it hasn't had it for a very, very long time.


> Since Marketing cares mostly about Customers (Users), that's what leads
> me to wonder when the marketing forces will recognize that paying lots
> of money to "protect the brand" in the DNS namespace is still worthwhile
> -- except to the companies charging for the naming rights.

Not sure whether it's been obvious to everyone, but we keep seeing 
serious demonstrations that humans (and organizations) can be highly 
resistant to facts.  (My current summary is that we tend to say that 
humans are intelligent, where the correct assessment should be that 
humans are merely capable of intelligence.)

d/

-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net


From dhc at dcrocker.net  Mon Feb  1 13:20:59 2021
From: dhc at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker)
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2021 13:20:59 -0800
Subject: [ih] Funny how things work out
In-Reply-To: <4EE91C1B-8AB4-48AC-9029-8FDAD15F2E67@tzi.org>
References: <b6dae3ed-0aa5-62d1-79f7-e4e0f9a8599a@gmail.com>
 <602ecf76-3649-724b-eac7-23d6d1c44e17@dcrocker.net>
 <28a9425e-3bc8-212a-c851-c8636115b8a5@3kitty.org>
 <e40b0d96-eed9-d0b1-7695-842c68b4ed67@dcrocker.net>
 <7a962efe-c130-fbc2-d3ac-befae1324fd3@3kitty.org>
 <4EE91C1B-8AB4-48AC-9029-8FDAD15F2E67@tzi.org>
Message-ID: <04469f5d-2aa5-b79c-aa52-5799aa4987a8@dcrocker.net>

On 2/1/2021 1:06 PM, Carsten Bormann via Internet-history wrote:
> Users are supposed to look at their browsers? address lines and verify that they are talking to the right site before they give up their credit card numbers, passwords etc.  Browsers have started supporting this by hiding any other part of the URI to various levels (greying out, completely hiding).


Except, of course, that expectation on end-user behavior has been 
solidly demonstrated to be inappropriate.

d/

-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net


From cabo at tzi.org  Mon Feb  1 13:43:25 2021
From: cabo at tzi.org (Carsten Bormann)
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2021 22:43:25 +0100
Subject: [ih] Funny how things work out
In-Reply-To: <04469f5d-2aa5-b79c-aa52-5799aa4987a8@dcrocker.net>
References: <b6dae3ed-0aa5-62d1-79f7-e4e0f9a8599a@gmail.com>
 <602ecf76-3649-724b-eac7-23d6d1c44e17@dcrocker.net>
 <28a9425e-3bc8-212a-c851-c8636115b8a5@3kitty.org>
 <e40b0d96-eed9-d0b1-7695-842c68b4ed67@dcrocker.net>
 <7a962efe-c130-fbc2-d3ac-befae1324fd3@3kitty.org>
 <4EE91C1B-8AB4-48AC-9029-8FDAD15F2E67@tzi.org>
 <04469f5d-2aa5-b79c-aa52-5799aa4987a8@dcrocker.net>
Message-ID: <D095E8FC-37CC-4346-9C00-51E98BDEADF4@tzi.org>

On 2021-02-01, at 22:20, Dave Crocker <dhc at dcrocker.net> wrote:
> 
> On 2/1/2021 1:06 PM, Carsten Bormann via Internet-history wrote:
>> Users are supposed to look at their browsers? address lines and verify that they are talking to the right site before they give up their credit card numbers, passwords etc.  Browsers have started supporting this by hiding any other part of the URI to various levels (greying out, completely hiding).
> 
> 
> Except, of course, that expectation on end-user behavior has been solidly demonstrated to be inappropriate.

Of course!  I thought that was obvious to anyone skilled in the art :-)

This doesn?t change the fact that the entirety of Web security is built on this shaky foundation.  Any evolution of DNS needs to be aware of this and avoid making things even more insecure.

Gr??e, Carsten



From jeanjour at comcast.net  Mon Feb  1 14:48:39 2021
From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day)
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2021 17:48:39 -0500
Subject: [ih] Funny how things work out
In-Reply-To: <7a962efe-c130-fbc2-d3ac-befae1324fd3@3kitty.org>
References: <b6dae3ed-0aa5-62d1-79f7-e4e0f9a8599a@gmail.com>
 <602ecf76-3649-724b-eac7-23d6d1c44e17@dcrocker.net>
 <28a9425e-3bc8-212a-c851-c8636115b8a5@3kitty.org>
 <e40b0d96-eed9-d0b1-7695-842c68b4ed67@dcrocker.net>
 <7a962efe-c130-fbc2-d3ac-befae1324fd3@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <398BEF09-AB6B-4C51-A5E8-F05CAD7700CB@comcast.net>

As long as we are harping on these sorts of things, I will throw in my pet peeve, not limiting a domain request to something reasonable. For example, there is small grocery in Harvard Square called Cardullos. They have Cardullos.com. They are small, they will never be nationwide, let alone worldwide. Why weren?t they asked to take Cardullos.ma.us?  Now who knows how many other businesses the greater Cardullo family has spread around the world. ;-) But there might be other more common names where taking a more localized domain name would be better and save all of the hassle and legal fees when world-wide Smith Co. finds out that that Smith.com is owned by a plumber in North Dakota. (I have no idea who has Smith.com, but you get my point.) ;-)  Look at MacIntosh:  computers, amplifiers, raincoats, an actual kind of apple, and who knows what all else!

John

> On Feb 1, 2021, at 15:55, Jack Haverty via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi Dave,
> 
> I agree that the DNS was never intended as a searching mechanism.  It
> has always done "lookup", converting strings into IP addresses.  
> 
> That's a view from the Technology side.  I was thinking as an end User,
> where the History of the Internet looks somewhat different.
> 
> From the User side, DNS also, at first, provided two other mechanisms
> useful for Users - Delegation and Organization.  Delegation solved Jon's
> problem, spreading out the work for managing the namespace to multiple
> people and organizations.  Organization provided a means of structuring
> the namespace so that it made some sense to Users.
> 
> As a User, I knew that a school site likely ended in .edu, a company
> site in .com, a US government site in .gov, etc.  So instead of
> "searching", a User knowing that old simple DNS organization of the name
> space could guess that MIT was mit.edu, UCLA was ucla.edu, yahoo was
> yahoo.com, Social Security was ssa.gov, etc.   Names were predictable,
> guessing was reliable enough.
> 
> That organizational structure broke as the Internet grew, and name
> collisions became common (like my examples).  The growth worldwide made
> the US-centric domain choices less palatable, and the explosion of TLDs
> has made it almost impossible to understand or remember the structure of
> the namespace or the "name" of a particular site.   Guessing and
> predicting has become much less successful for the Users, and
> remembering, even short-term, almost impossible.
> 
> So, IMHO, DNS still does an admirable job of maintaining and operating a
> distributed database translating between "names" and "addresses", and
> provides the mechanisms needed for delegation.  But its utility to Users
> has decayed over time as the Internet grew.  It's now a mechanism for
> translating between two obscure (to Users) character strings, one of
> which (IP addresses) they rarely see.   DNS mechanisms are still an
> important part of the internal machinery of the 'net, but DNS names seem
> no longer very relevant as part of the "Internet UI".   Names are just
> an arbitrary stringofcharacters that you have little need to remember or
> type.
> 
> Since Marketing cares mostly about Customers (Users), that's what leads
> me to wonder when the marketing forces will recognize that paying lots
> of money to "protect the brand" in the DNS namespace is still worthwhile
> -- except to the companies charging for the naming rights.
> 
> /Jack
> 
> 
> On 2/1/21 10:58 AM, Dave Crocker wrote:
>> On 2/1/2021 10:30 AM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
>>> Fast forward to today, and I no longer have a clue what name to use to
>>> find what I want online, and the proliferation of TLDs and explosion of
>>> names isn't helping.
>>> 
>>> I'm wondering if, from the Users' perspective, the DNS mechanisms have
>>> simply become unusable and irrelevant.
>> 
>> The model you describe is for searching.  The DNS doesn't do that.  It
>> does lookup. As already noted, there's a basic difference between
>> being able to guess a string versus being able to remember a string. 
>> There's also a difference between longer-term vs. shorter-term
>> remembering.
>> 
>> The mnemoics of domain names is useful for shorter-term remembering
>> and sometimes useful for longer-term remembering.  Since it isn't
>> intended for searching, there shouldn't be any surprise that it's
>> terrible for that function.  Always has been.
>> 
>> 
>>> So, as a user, I don't really care any more what the DNS "web address"
>>> is, whether asiangarden.gv or 19876.weirdname.whatever.something.   I
>>> never remember those, and never type them in anymore.
>>> 
>>> That's why I'm wondering if DNS and TLDs and all the name structure is
>>> worth all the trouble anymore.  It's still useful as a level of
>>> indirection to separate "names" from IP addresses that may change.   But
>>> as a mnemonic for Users, it's devolved over time to become useless.  At
>>> least for me...maybe other Users too?
>>> 
>>> I wonder when the "brand defenders" will realize this...funny how things
>>> work out.
>> 
>> What you describe has always been true.  The problem has been the
>> re-application of long-standin (pre-digital) brand protection models
>> to this very different world.
>> 
>> d/
>> 
> 
> -- 
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history



From dhc at dcrocker.net  Mon Feb  1 14:59:17 2021
From: dhc at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker)
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2021 14:59:17 -0800
Subject: [ih] Funny how things work out
In-Reply-To: <398BEF09-AB6B-4C51-A5E8-F05CAD7700CB@comcast.net>
References: <b6dae3ed-0aa5-62d1-79f7-e4e0f9a8599a@gmail.com>
 <602ecf76-3649-724b-eac7-23d6d1c44e17@dcrocker.net>
 <28a9425e-3bc8-212a-c851-c8636115b8a5@3kitty.org>
 <e40b0d96-eed9-d0b1-7695-842c68b4ed67@dcrocker.net>
 <7a962efe-c130-fbc2-d3ac-befae1324fd3@3kitty.org>
 <398BEF09-AB6B-4C51-A5E8-F05CAD7700CB@comcast.net>
Message-ID: <ba73e9af-a3f5-b197-e411-1f9053e24e34@dcrocker.net>

On 2/1/2021 2:48 PM, John Day via Internet-history wrote:
>   Why weren?t they asked to take Cardullos.ma.us?

The exercise of trying to write comprehensive rules that would both suit 
your concern and survive court challenges might be enlightening.

d/

-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net


From geoff at iconia.com  Mon Feb  1 15:12:15 2021
From: geoff at iconia.com (the keyboard of geoff goodfellow)
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2021 13:12:15 -1000
Subject: [ih] Funny how things work out
In-Reply-To: <398BEF09-AB6B-4C51-A5E8-F05CAD7700CB@comcast.net>
References: <b6dae3ed-0aa5-62d1-79f7-e4e0f9a8599a@gmail.com>
 <602ecf76-3649-724b-eac7-23d6d1c44e17@dcrocker.net>
 <28a9425e-3bc8-212a-c851-c8636115b8a5@3kitty.org>
 <e40b0d96-eed9-d0b1-7695-842c68b4ed67@dcrocker.net>
 <7a962efe-c130-fbc2-d3ac-befae1324fd3@3kitty.org>
 <398BEF09-AB6B-4C51-A5E8-F05CAD7700CB@comcast.net>
Message-ID: <CAEf-zrhFNx_JED9AQpHdVg8QFKsHNUBrppwRhJpGByhRn53FBg@mail.gmail.com>

just curious john,
vis-a-vis Cardullos.com: "Why weren?t they asked to take Cardullos.ma.us?"

uhm, am curious to know just WHO would have done said asking?

furthermore vis-a-vis being asked to take Cardullos.ma.us:

that actually would have been Cardullos.boston.ma.us -- as when JonP setup
the .us domain (for which my system fernwood.mpk.ca.us was the first
host/domain registered in it) he mandated/decreed that registrations in the
.us domain take the form of name.city.state.us.

and the kicker was that the city part of the us domain was taken from the
TWX city code list of answer back codes...

how does yours truly know this, one might ask?

confession: it was yours truly who provided JonP with said TWX city code
list of answer back code list.

geoff

On Mon, Feb 1, 2021 at 12:49 PM John Day via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> As long as we are harping on these sorts of things, I will throw in my pet
> peeve, not limiting a domain request to something reasonable. For example,
> there is small grocery in Harvard Square called Cardullos. They have
> Cardullos.com. They are small, they will never be nationwide, let alone
> worldwide. Why weren?t they asked to take Cardullos.ma.us?  Now who knows
> how many other businesses the greater Cardullo family has spread around the
> world. ;-) But there might be other more common names where taking a more
> localized domain name would be better and save all of the hassle and legal
> fees when world-wide Smith Co. finds out that that Smith.com is owned by a
> plumber in North Dakota. (I have no idea who has Smith.com, but you get my
> point.) ;-)  Look at MacIntosh:  computers, amplifiers, raincoats, an
> actual kind of apple, and who knows what all else!
>
> John
>
> > On Feb 1, 2021, at 15:55, Jack Haverty via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >
> > Hi Dave,
> >
> > I agree that the DNS was never intended as a searching mechanism.  It
> > has always done "lookup", converting strings into IP addresses.
> >
> > That's a view from the Technology side.  I was thinking as an end User,
> > where the History of the Internet looks somewhat different.
> >
> > From the User side, DNS also, at first, provided two other mechanisms
> > useful for Users - Delegation and Organization.  Delegation solved Jon's
> > problem, spreading out the work for managing the namespace to multiple
> > people and organizations.  Organization provided a means of structuring
> > the namespace so that it made some sense to Users.
> >
> > As a User, I knew that a school site likely ended in .edu, a company
> > site in .com, a US government site in .gov, etc.  So instead of
> > "searching", a User knowing that old simple DNS organization of the name
> > space could guess that MIT was mit.edu, UCLA was ucla.edu, yahoo was
> > yahoo.com, Social Security was ssa.gov, etc.   Names were predictable,
> > guessing was reliable enough.
> >
> > That organizational structure broke as the Internet grew, and name
> > collisions became common (like my examples).  The growth worldwide made
> > the US-centric domain choices less palatable, and the explosion of TLDs
> > has made it almost impossible to understand or remember the structure of
> > the namespace or the "name" of a particular site.   Guessing and
> > predicting has become much less successful for the Users, and
> > remembering, even short-term, almost impossible.
> >
> > So, IMHO, DNS still does an admirable job of maintaining and operating a
> > distributed database translating between "names" and "addresses", and
> > provides the mechanisms needed for delegation.  But its utility to Users
> > has decayed over time as the Internet grew.  It's now a mechanism for
> > translating between two obscure (to Users) character strings, one of
> > which (IP addresses) they rarely see.   DNS mechanisms are still an
> > important part of the internal machinery of the 'net, but DNS names seem
> > no longer very relevant as part of the "Internet UI".   Names are just
> > an arbitrary stringofcharacters that you have little need to remember or
> > type.
> >
> > Since Marketing cares mostly about Customers (Users), that's what leads
> > me to wonder when the marketing forces will recognize that paying lots
> > of money to "protect the brand" in the DNS namespace is still worthwhile
> > -- except to the companies charging for the naming rights.
> >
> > /Jack
> >
> >
> > On 2/1/21 10:58 AM, Dave Crocker wrote:
> >> On 2/1/2021 10:30 AM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
> >>> Fast forward to today, and I no longer have a clue what name to use to
> >>> find what I want online, and the proliferation of TLDs and explosion of
> >>> names isn't helping.
> >>>
> >>> I'm wondering if, from the Users' perspective, the DNS mechanisms have
> >>> simply become unusable and irrelevant.
> >>
> >> The model you describe is for searching.  The DNS doesn't do that.  It
> >> does lookup. As already noted, there's a basic difference between
> >> being able to guess a string versus being able to remember a string.
> >> There's also a difference between longer-term vs. shorter-term
> >> remembering.
> >>
> >> The mnemoics of domain names is useful for shorter-term remembering
> >> and sometimes useful for longer-term remembering.  Since it isn't
> >> intended for searching, there shouldn't be any surprise that it's
> >> terrible for that function.  Always has been.
> >>
> >>
> >>> So, as a user, I don't really care any more what the DNS "web address"
> >>> is, whether asiangarden.gv or 19876.weirdname.whatever.something.   I
> >>> never remember those, and never type them in anymore.
> >>>
> >>> That's why I'm wondering if DNS and TLDs and all the name structure is
> >>> worth all the trouble anymore.  It's still useful as a level of
> >>> indirection to separate "names" from IP addresses that may change.
>  But
> >>> as a mnemonic for Users, it's devolved over time to become useless.  At
> >>> least for me...maybe other Users too?
> >>>
> >>> I wonder when the "brand defenders" will realize this...funny how
> things
> >>> work out.
> >>
> >> What you describe has always been true.  The problem has been the
> >> re-application of long-standin (pre-digital) brand protection models
> >> to this very different world.
> >>
> >> d/
> >>
> >
> > --
> > Internet-history mailing list
> > Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> > https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>
>

-- 
Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com
living as The Truth is True


From touch at strayalpha.com  Mon Feb  1 15:31:27 2021
From: touch at strayalpha.com (Joseph Touch)
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2021 15:31:27 -0800
Subject: [ih] Funny how things work out
In-Reply-To: <398BEF09-AB6B-4C51-A5E8-F05CAD7700CB@comcast.net>
References: <b6dae3ed-0aa5-62d1-79f7-e4e0f9a8599a@gmail.com>
 <602ecf76-3649-724b-eac7-23d6d1c44e17@dcrocker.net>
 <28a9425e-3bc8-212a-c851-c8636115b8a5@3kitty.org>
 <e40b0d96-eed9-d0b1-7695-842c68b4ed67@dcrocker.net>
 <7a962efe-c130-fbc2-d3ac-befae1324fd3@3kitty.org>
 <398BEF09-AB6B-4C51-A5E8-F05CAD7700CB@comcast.net>
Message-ID: <40FD280C-1C7E-4CCE-ACC5-4A1A79D77660@strayalpha.com>



> On Feb 1, 2021, at 2:48 PM, John Day via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> As long as we are harping on these sorts of things, I will throw in my pet peeve, not limiting a domain request to something reasonable. For example, there is small grocery in Harvard Square called Cardullos. They have Cardullos.com <http://cardullos.com/>. They are small, they will never be nationwide, let alone worldwide. Why weren?t they asked to take Cardullos.ma.us <http://cardullos.ma.us/>?

Why not Cardullos.cambridge.ma.us <http://cardullos.boston.ci.ma.us/>?

RFC1480 has some history.

One reason is that originally those names were used for government and public entities.

At least one reason is that cambridge.ma.us might not have been delegated at the time Cardullos asked. Or ma.us <http://ma.us/> for that matter.

Then there?s the issue that Cardullos has another store in Boston, so should they also have cardullos.boston.ma.us <http://cardullos.boston.ma.us/>? Or what happens if they open another in Bristol, VT? (And what makes you think they would never be anything but local?)

To answer your original question, ?because .com is where companies had DNS names? was the answer for a very long time before there were other domains.

Joe




From sob at sobco.com  Mon Feb  1 15:25:13 2021
From: sob at sobco.com (Scott O. Bradner)
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2021 18:25:13 -0500
Subject: [ih] Funny how things work out
In-Reply-To: <398BEF09-AB6B-4C51-A5E8-F05CAD7700CB@comcast.net>
References: <b6dae3ed-0aa5-62d1-79f7-e4e0f9a8599a@gmail.com>
 <602ecf76-3649-724b-eac7-23d6d1c44e17@dcrocker.net>
 <28a9425e-3bc8-212a-c851-c8636115b8a5@3kitty.org>
 <e40b0d96-eed9-d0b1-7695-842c68b4ed67@dcrocker.net>
 <7a962efe-c130-fbc2-d3ac-befae1324fd3@3kitty.org>
 <398BEF09-AB6B-4C51-A5E8-F05CAD7700CB@comcast.net>
Message-ID: <627AC10E-C0C1-47D8-A7CB-24F65D5186C6@sobco.com>



> On Feb 1, 2021, at 5:48 PM, John Day via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> As long as we are harping on these sorts of things, I will throw in my pet peeve, not limiting a domain request to something reasonable. For example, there is small grocery in Harvard Square called Cardullos. They have Cardullos.com. They are small, they will never be nationwide, let alone worldwide. Why weren?t they asked to take Cardullos.ma.us?  

may because they got the domain in 1996 - before .us was seen as a ?real? domain?

Scott

From eric.gade at gmail.com  Mon Feb  1 15:43:11 2021
From: eric.gade at gmail.com (Eric Gade)
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2021 18:43:11 -0500
Subject: [ih] Funny how things work out
In-Reply-To: <627AC10E-C0C1-47D8-A7CB-24F65D5186C6@sobco.com>
References: <b6dae3ed-0aa5-62d1-79f7-e4e0f9a8599a@gmail.com>
 <602ecf76-3649-724b-eac7-23d6d1c44e17@dcrocker.net>
 <28a9425e-3bc8-212a-c851-c8636115b8a5@3kitty.org>
 <e40b0d96-eed9-d0b1-7695-842c68b4ed67@dcrocker.net>
 <7a962efe-c130-fbc2-d3ac-befae1324fd3@3kitty.org>
 <398BEF09-AB6B-4C51-A5E8-F05CAD7700CB@comcast.net>
 <627AC10E-C0C1-47D8-A7CB-24F65D5186C6@sobco.com>
Message-ID: <CA+CiqoW21ZFxpjjkTgEtYQdfEZWzvt_EaG+sxX-vgZAkC0NFTg@mail.gmail.com>

On Mon, Feb 1, 2021 at 6:35 PM Scott O. Bradner via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

>
> may because they got the domain in 1996 - before .us was seen as a ?real?
> domain?
>
> Scott
>

As far as I could tell, the ambiguity about when to use any ccTLD vs using
a gTLD was a problem almost from the beginning. I cover some of this in my
thesis (available here <https://gade.us/thesis>). For a lot of people the
US TLD was seen as redundant, because the gTLDs themselves became
considered the "American" ones. For example, GOV didn't apply to all kinds
of governments internationally. EDU also had this issue (ac.uk for
example). This was all controversial well before 1990.


-- 
Eric


From vint at google.com  Mon Feb  1 15:55:28 2021
From: vint at google.com (Vint Cerf)
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2021 18:55:28 -0500
Subject: [ih] Funny how things work out
In-Reply-To: <627AC10E-C0C1-47D8-A7CB-24F65D5186C6@sobco.com>
References: <b6dae3ed-0aa5-62d1-79f7-e4e0f9a8599a@gmail.com>
 <602ecf76-3649-724b-eac7-23d6d1c44e17@dcrocker.net>
 <28a9425e-3bc8-212a-c851-c8636115b8a5@3kitty.org>
 <e40b0d96-eed9-d0b1-7695-842c68b4ed67@dcrocker.net>
 <7a962efe-c130-fbc2-d3ac-befae1324fd3@3kitty.org>
 <398BEF09-AB6B-4C51-A5E8-F05CAD7700CB@comcast.net>
 <627AC10E-C0C1-47D8-A7CB-24F65D5186C6@sobco.com>
Message-ID: <CAHxHggfy=nWJN=dDNLmXH3ZdYyueTNg0wP6+zpT==BXug7ZX-A@mail.gmail.com>

in 1986, I registered the Corporation for National Research Initiatives as
CNRI.reston.va.us

v


On Mon, Feb 1, 2021 at 6:35 PM Scott O. Bradner via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

>
>
> > On Feb 1, 2021, at 5:48 PM, John Day via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >
> > As long as we are harping on these sorts of things, I will throw in my
> pet peeve, not limiting a domain request to something reasonable. For
> example, there is small grocery in Harvard Square called Cardullos. They
> have Cardullos.com. They are small, they will never be nationwide, let
> alone worldwide. Why weren?t they asked to take Cardullos.ma.us?
>
> may because they got the domain in 1996 - before .us was seen as a ?real?
> domain?
>
> Scott
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>


-- 
Please send any postal/overnight deliveries to:
Vint Cerf
1435 Woodhurst Blvd
McLean, VA 22102
703-448-0965

until further notice

From brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com  Mon Feb  1 17:50:05 2021
From: brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com (Brian E Carpenter)
Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2021 14:50:05 +1300
Subject: [ih] Funny how things work out
In-Reply-To: <ba73e9af-a3f5-b197-e411-1f9053e24e34@dcrocker.net>
References: <b6dae3ed-0aa5-62d1-79f7-e4e0f9a8599a@gmail.com>
 <602ecf76-3649-724b-eac7-23d6d1c44e17@dcrocker.net>
 <28a9425e-3bc8-212a-c851-c8636115b8a5@3kitty.org>
 <e40b0d96-eed9-d0b1-7695-842c68b4ed67@dcrocker.net>
 <7a962efe-c130-fbc2-d3ac-befae1324fd3@3kitty.org>
 <398BEF09-AB6B-4C51-A5E8-F05CAD7700CB@comcast.net>
 <ba73e9af-a3f5-b197-e411-1f9053e24e34@dcrocker.net>
Message-ID: <677b776f-ef53-5aaa-7a00-694ce2ced3f6@gmail.com>

On 02-Feb-21 11:59, Dave Crocker via Internet-history wrote:
> On 2/1/2021 2:48 PM, John Day via Internet-history wrote:
>>   Why weren?t they asked to take Cardullos.ma.us?
> 
> The exercise of trying to write comprehensive rules that would both suit 
> your concern and survive court challenges might be enlightening.

Indeed. My own naive proposal in those far-off days was that the fee
for a .com name should have been about $1000, intentionally high, so
that only companies with a genuine international scope would go there.
Everyone else would go into their local country code, like CNRI.
Unfortunately Chicago School economics prevailed: no pesky regulations,
let the market decide, and all will be well. So we got 1261 gTLDs
and counting.

   Brian



From gnu at toad.com  Mon Feb  1 18:04:41 2021
From: gnu at toad.com (John Gilmore)
Date: Mon, 01 Feb 2021 18:04:41 -0800
Subject: [ih] Funny how things work out
In-Reply-To: <398BEF09-AB6B-4C51-A5E8-F05CAD7700CB@comcast.net> 
References: <b6dae3ed-0aa5-62d1-79f7-e4e0f9a8599a@gmail.com>
 <602ecf76-3649-724b-eac7-23d6d1c44e17@dcrocker.net>
 <28a9425e-3bc8-212a-c851-c8636115b8a5@3kitty.org>
 <e40b0d96-eed9-d0b1-7695-842c68b4ed67@dcrocker.net>
 <7a962efe-c130-fbc2-d3ac-befae1324fd3@3kitty.org>
 <398BEF09-AB6B-4C51-A5E8-F05CAD7700CB@comcast.net>
Message-ID: <23208.1612231481@hop.toad.com>

Hey, why not rehash all this useless domain name controversy -- it's a
history list anyway.  Everybody knows how to fix the system, if only
everyone else would change; the main challenge is that nobody made you
ruler of the universe.  Things are pretty much the same as they were 25
years ago, except that now there's a corrupt series of self-serving
nonprofits "in charge" of these policies, whose attention is mostly on
small tweaks that have the effect of feeding themselves cash.

Here was my small suggestion to the Economist Magazine when they covered
domain names in 1996:

  http://www.toad.com/gnu/dns-economist.html

Of course, nobody made me ruler of the universe, so my suggestions were
not accepted.  Instead, a domain-name adjudication system favorable to
trademark holders, biased against ordinary users, was instituted by the
corrupt self-serving nonprofits.  Yet despite trademark holders'
successful lobbying, now there are thousands of TLDs in which trademark
holders can pay uselessly for "brand protection" by sending money to
corrupt self-serving nonprofits or for-profit businesses.  When your job
is to fleece people out of their money, apparently trademark holders are
a better long-term target than ordinary Internet users.  Some might even
argue that by feeding money to ICANN from clueless places like CERN, the
policies are keeping domain name prices low for average joes -- though
they would be wrong, since ICANN's fees for domain names have nothing to
do with their costs nor their profit margins, being a monopoly.  I don't
know if the Economist has covered this aspect of the Internet Economy
yet.

	John
	


From dhc at dcrocker.net  Mon Feb  1 18:14:23 2021
From: dhc at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker)
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2021 18:14:23 -0800
Subject: [ih] Funny how things work out
In-Reply-To: <677b776f-ef53-5aaa-7a00-694ce2ced3f6@gmail.com>
References: <b6dae3ed-0aa5-62d1-79f7-e4e0f9a8599a@gmail.com>
 <602ecf76-3649-724b-eac7-23d6d1c44e17@dcrocker.net>
 <28a9425e-3bc8-212a-c851-c8636115b8a5@3kitty.org>
 <e40b0d96-eed9-d0b1-7695-842c68b4ed67@dcrocker.net>
 <7a962efe-c130-fbc2-d3ac-befae1324fd3@3kitty.org>
 <398BEF09-AB6B-4C51-A5E8-F05CAD7700CB@comcast.net>
 <ba73e9af-a3f5-b197-e411-1f9053e24e34@dcrocker.net>
 <677b776f-ef53-5aaa-7a00-694ce2ced3f6@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <3b293338-1092-47ee-9100-c85a78f9cb59@dcrocker.net>

On 2/1/2021 5:50 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
> So we got 1261 gTLDs
> and counting.


While I think it's easy to view the number of TLDs as not needed or 
maybe even silly, it's less obvious to me that this qualifies as a 
serious badness, absent careful articulation and substantiation.

Beyond possible waste and unpleasant emotion, how does this qualify for 
more than a 'so what'?

d/

-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net


From dhc at dcrocker.net  Mon Feb  1 18:18:59 2021
From: dhc at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker)
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2021 18:18:59 -0800
Subject: [ih] Funny how things work out
In-Reply-To: <65EEBBF2-BF6A-434C-891B-F876D9A8ABA2@gmail.com>
References: <b6dae3ed-0aa5-62d1-79f7-e4e0f9a8599a@gmail.com>
 <602ecf76-3649-724b-eac7-23d6d1c44e17@dcrocker.net>
 <28a9425e-3bc8-212a-c851-c8636115b8a5@3kitty.org>
 <e40b0d96-eed9-d0b1-7695-842c68b4ed67@dcrocker.net>
 <7a962efe-c130-fbc2-d3ac-befae1324fd3@3kitty.org>
 <398BEF09-AB6B-4C51-A5E8-F05CAD7700CB@comcast.net>
 <ba73e9af-a3f5-b197-e411-1f9053e24e34@dcrocker.net>
 <677b776f-ef53-5aaa-7a00-694ce2ced3f6@gmail.com>
 <65EEBBF2-BF6A-434C-891B-F876D9A8ABA2@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <88ed2863-6fda-c557-98f3-adc84ecbd82a@dcrocker.net>

On 2/1/2021 5:54 PM, Tony Li wrote:
> Thus, if an architecture requires the use of hierarchy, it must be explicitly mandated, otherwise other human motivations
> will compromise the architecture.


Permits vs. requires.

The choice become arbitrary, absent thoughtful justification in 
technical, operations, cost, cognitive, social or legal considerations.

In the current case, it does not appear that the existing use (or 
non-use) of hierarchy has caused problems with any of that above list, 
except some social and/or legal hassles.  But it doesn't seem to rise 
above 'hassles'.

If there is a compelling case for imposing more use of the hierarchy, 
what is it?


d/

-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net


From karl at cavebear.com  Mon Feb  1 19:09:51 2021
From: karl at cavebear.com (Karl Auerbach)
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2021 19:09:51 -0800
Subject: [ih] Funny how things work out
In-Reply-To: <602ecf76-3649-724b-eac7-23d6d1c44e17@dcrocker.net>
References: <b6dae3ed-0aa5-62d1-79f7-e4e0f9a8599a@gmail.com>
 <602ecf76-3649-724b-eac7-23d6d1c44e17@dcrocker.net>
Message-ID: <13d027f8-46af-a9d1-9fb5-c154e159a383@cavebear.com>

On 2/1/21 7:23 AM, Dave Crocker via Internet-history wrote:

> The pre-ICANN effort of the IAHC included a survey of various DNS 
> experts.? While there was no consensus about the technical limits of 
> the DNS or its operation, there was a pretty solid view that a couple 
> of thousand TLDs would not be a technical problem.

Peter Deutsch (remember Archie, one of, if not the first search engine?) 
and I decided to try to see if we could make a root server go boom by 
stuffing it with a mountain of TLDs.

This was done, of course, entirely off line.

What we did was to grab a copy of the entire .com zone at the time (it 
was much smaller then, but still many millions of names) and "elevated" 
it to be the root zone in a Bind based server on a reasonably well 
endowed PC of that era (small by today's standards.)

We then wrote some code that threw a synthetic query stream at the box, 
with a controllable mix of invalid queries and other things to try to 
annoy its internal caching.? We set up several of these synthetic 
traffic generators, lit the fuse, and watched.

It did not collapse, it didn't even really break out in much of a 
sweat.? We were somewhat astonished.

Our conclusion what that even way back then that there was a lot, and I 
mean a lot, of headroom in the root zone for expansion.? And that was a 
couple of decades ago.

My sense was that the root size limits were not so much on the number of 
TLD entries but more on the areas of propagation of updates and the rate 
of human error maintaining all of those entries.

Later on I was part of a crew that filled out and submitted the better 
part of a hundred new TLD applications to ICANN.? Whew! (But at least we 
got to spend those months mostly in some extraordinarily nice 
locations.)? [There's a whole interesting side story about how we and 
other teams were able to game ICANN's "digital archery" ;-)? ]

I much agree with the notion that many top level domains are not very 
useful.

I'm also of the belief that DNS is slowly fading out of the eyes of 
users and becoming more a part of the internal machinery of the net 
rather than something we ought to fight about.? See 
https://www.cavebear.com/cavebear-blog/fading-domain-names/

Some years back I looked at naming issues in cloud computing and asked 
whether DNS was adequate.? My conclusion was that DNS forms a really 
solid, rock solid, foundation for relatively non-dynamic name-to-record 
mapping, but that cloud computing presented some issues that are beyond DNS.

These included the need to deal with entities in "the cloud" that could 
partition and rejoin. I wrote a note about that - On Entity Associations 
In A Cloud Network - 
https://www.cavebear.com/archive/public/cloud-entities.pdf

I am much of the belief that we can learn a lot from biology.? In 
particular, I was struck by many users of the net who are want to locate 
an instance of a thing rather than the, singular thing. For example, if 
I am looking for a station to charge my car I am interested in a thing 
with characteristics of "supercharger" and "near me" rather than search 
for some particular instance.

Living entities have a similar need to find things, like mates, based on 
attributes (e.g. my species, opposite sex, near me) rather than a given 
instance.

It seems to me that the Internet could use something on top of DNS that 
is more like a search engine than a name-to-record mapping engine.

Web search engines seem too much attuned to human users than 
programmatic ones, and more tuned to keywords than some open set of 
meta-attributes.? There was a protocol some time back, IF-MAP, that was 
going down that road; I don't know what happened to it, but it felt like 
it was pointing in a needed direction.

(For years, sort of as a joke, sort of seriously, have proposed the 
notion of Internet pheromones as a means of locating resources.? But I 
always run into the same wall - a protein or other complex chemical in a 
pheromone can carry far more information that we can stuff into any 
rational size data packet; and chemistry seems much better suited to 
fast pattern matching than most of our computers.)

(I could also go off in the direction of how we could adopt some methods 
from astrophysics into the net but I've gone far enough astray already.)

 ??? --karl--




From brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com  Mon Feb  1 20:29:12 2021
From: brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com (Brian E Carpenter)
Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2021 17:29:12 +1300
Subject: [ih] Funny how things work out
In-Reply-To: <3b293338-1092-47ee-9100-c85a78f9cb59@dcrocker.net>
References: <b6dae3ed-0aa5-62d1-79f7-e4e0f9a8599a@gmail.com>
 <602ecf76-3649-724b-eac7-23d6d1c44e17@dcrocker.net>
 <28a9425e-3bc8-212a-c851-c8636115b8a5@3kitty.org>
 <e40b0d96-eed9-d0b1-7695-842c68b4ed67@dcrocker.net>
 <7a962efe-c130-fbc2-d3ac-befae1324fd3@3kitty.org>
 <398BEF09-AB6B-4C51-A5E8-F05CAD7700CB@comcast.net>
 <ba73e9af-a3f5-b197-e411-1f9053e24e34@dcrocker.net>
 <677b776f-ef53-5aaa-7a00-694ce2ced3f6@gmail.com>
 <3b293338-1092-47ee-9100-c85a78f9cb59@dcrocker.net>
Message-ID: <7f984413-f685-2712-286e-aa7c0e2e8e65@gmail.com>

On 02-Feb-21 15:14, Dave Crocker wrote:
> On 2/1/2021 5:50 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
>> So we got 1261 gTLDs
>> and counting.
> 
> 
> While I think it's easy to view the number of TLDs as not needed or 
> maybe even silly, it's less obvious to me that this qualifies as a 
> serious badness, absent careful articulation and substantiation.
> 
> Beyond possible waste and unpleasant emotion, how does this qualify for 
> more than a 'so what'?

Because it's become a method of wealth transfer which (whether or not you
agree that it's corrupt) is clearly of no underlying productive value.
The world would be no worse off if most of those TLDs did not exist,
except that the millions of dollars paid to ICANN and various registrars
would have been used otherwise. I don't think it's "possible" waste;
it's definite waste, and probably wastes quite a bit of energy every day.

Admittedly, that's true of many of the things we do in the rich countries
of the world.

   Brian


From johnl at iecc.com  Mon Feb  1 20:45:02 2021
From: johnl at iecc.com (John Levine)
Date: 1 Feb 2021 23:45:02 -0500
Subject: [ih] Funny how things work out
In-Reply-To: <40FD280C-1C7E-4CCE-ACC5-4A1A79D77660@strayalpha.com>
Message-ID: <20210202044502.73CE46D23B54@ary.qy>

In article <40FD280C-1C7E-4CCE-ACC5-4A1A79D77660 at strayalpha.com> you write:
>
>
>> On Feb 1, 2021, at 2:48 PM, John Day via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>> 
>> As long as we are harping on these sorts of things, I will throw in my pet peeve, not limiting a domain request to something
>reasonable. For example, there is small grocery in Harvard Square called Cardullos. They have Cardullos.com <http://cardullos.com/>.
>They are small, they will never be nationwide, let alone worldwide. Why weren?t they asked to take Cardullos.ma.us
><http://cardullos.ma.us/>?
>
>Why not Cardullos.cambridge.ma.us <http://cardullos.boston.ci.ma.us/>?
>
>RFC1480 has some history.
>
>One reason is that originally those names were used for government and public entities.
>
>At least one reason is that cambridge.ma.us might not have been delegated at the time Cardullos asked. Or ma.us <http://ma.us/> for
>that matter.

It's because cardullos.com was easier to type, and in particular because Netscape added .com to bare names.

I registered iecc.cambridge.ma.us in about 1992, four years before
Cardullo's got their name. It still exists as a CNAME in the .US
legacy database and gets a lot of spam.



From johnl at iecc.com  Mon Feb  1 20:53:37 2021
From: johnl at iecc.com (John Levine)
Date: 1 Feb 2021 23:53:37 -0500
Subject: [ih] Funny how things work out
In-Reply-To: <7f984413-f685-2712-286e-aa7c0e2e8e65@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20210202045338.0BE706D23CEE@ary.qy>

In article <7f984413-f685-2712-286e-aa7c0e2e8e65 at gmail.com> you write:
>> Beyond possible waste and unpleasant emotion, how does this qualify for 
>> more than a 'so what'?
>
>Because it's become a method of wealth transfer which (whether or not you
>agree that it's corrupt) is clearly of no underlying productive value.

It's a pretty minor one. By my estimate, the entire annual revenue of
the domain industry, registries, registrars, ICANN, squatters,
speculators, you name it, is about what Google takes in every week.

For me the problem with all of the new TLDs is that way too many of
them are run incompetently or worse and are infested with spammers and
crooks.

R's,
John


From johnl at iecc.com  Mon Feb  1 21:11:56 2021
From: johnl at iecc.com (John Levine)
Date: 2 Feb 2021 05:11:56 -0000
Subject: [ih] Funny how things work out
In-Reply-To: <b6dae3ed-0aa5-62d1-79f7-e4e0f9a8599a@gmail.com>
 <509FD2CF-33E5-416F-B312-6E296E94A8BE@pch.net>
References: <b6dae3ed-0aa5-62d1-79f7-e4e0f9a8599a@gmail.com>
 <509FD2CF-33E5-416F-B312-6E296E94A8BE@pch.net>
Message-ID: <rvamus$1u6a$1@gal.iecc.com>

In article <509FD2CF-33E5-416F-B312-6E296E94A8BE at pch.net>,
Bill Woodcock via Internet-history <woody at pch.net> wrote:
>If anyone can shed any light on how the ???only delegations??? rule came to be, I???d love to hear the history there.

My recollection is that the issue is while single component names work
fine in the DNS, they work rather badly in applications. Many ccTLDs
have A or MX records at the top level so you can try and see how badly
they work. Try the web sites at BH. or PN. or ponder the fact that GT.
has MX records pointing at Gmail. See RFC 7085.

Google asked for an exception to put an A record at SEARCH and ICANN
said no, both for technical reasons and it seemed rather anti-competitive.
They came back with a hack to let users pick their favorite search engine
(with a browser cookie as I recall) and the answer was still no.

The delegation-only rule isn't enforced very strictly. Lots of gTLDs
have signed orphan glue, .BIZ and .TRAVEL have a SRV records. Then
there's .NAME which has odd rules that let them put a lot of MX
records in their zone.

R's,
John
-- 
Regards,
John Levine, johnl at taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly



From jhlowry at mac.com  Tue Feb  2 03:06:45 2021
From: jhlowry at mac.com (John Lowry)
Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2021 06:06:45 -0500
Subject: [ih] Funny how things work out
In-Reply-To: <40FD280C-1C7E-4CCE-ACC5-4A1A79D77660@strayalpha.com>
References: <40FD280C-1C7E-4CCE-ACC5-4A1A79D77660@strayalpha.com>
Message-ID: <1D326355-D150-468A-AADC-A306A1717B10@mac.com>

It looks suspiciously like Relative Distinguished Names with an opportunity for an ?authority? at each level.

> On Feb 1, 2021, at 6:32 PM, Joseph Touch via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> ?
> 
>> On Feb 1, 2021, at 2:48 PM, John Day via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>> 
>> As long as we are harping on these sorts of things, I will throw in my pet peeve, not limiting a domain request to something reasonable. For example, there is small grocery in Harvard Square called Cardullos. They have Cardullos.com <http://cardullos.com/>. They are small, they will never be nationwide, let alone worldwide. Why weren?t they asked to take Cardullos.ma.us <http://cardullos.ma.us/>?
> 
> Why not Cardullos.cambridge.ma.us <http://cardullos.boston.ci.ma.us/>?
> 
> RFC1480 has some history.
> 
> One reason is that originally those names were used for government and public entities.
> 
> At least one reason is that cambridge.ma.us might not have been delegated at the time Cardullos asked. Or ma.us <http://ma.us/> for that matter.
> 
> Then there?s the issue that Cardullos has another store in Boston, so should they also have cardullos.boston.ma.us <http://cardullos.boston.ma.us/>? Or what happens if they open another in Bristol, VT? (And what makes you think they would never be anything but local?)
> 
> To answer your original question, ?because .com is where companies had DNS names? was the answer for a very long time before there were other domains.
> 
> Joe
> 
> 
> -- 
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history


From tte at cs.fau.de  Tue Feb  2 08:29:57 2021
From: tte at cs.fau.de (Toerless Eckert)
Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2021 17:29:57 +0100
Subject: [ih] Funny how things work out
In-Reply-To: <afe99600-95b8-6fe4-4311-c31b14d20044@dcrocker.net>
References: <b6dae3ed-0aa5-62d1-79f7-e4e0f9a8599a@gmail.com>
 <602ecf76-3649-724b-eac7-23d6d1c44e17@dcrocker.net>
 <28a9425e-3bc8-212a-c851-c8636115b8a5@3kitty.org>
 <e40b0d96-eed9-d0b1-7695-842c68b4ed67@dcrocker.net>
 <7a962efe-c130-fbc2-d3ac-befae1324fd3@3kitty.org>
 <afe99600-95b8-6fe4-4311-c31b14d20044@dcrocker.net>
Message-ID: <20210202162957.GI35983@faui48f.informatik.uni-erlangen.de>

On Mon, Feb 01, 2021 at 01:19:30PM -0800, Dave Crocker via Internet-history wrote:
> On 2/1/2021 12:55 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
> > Hi Dave,
> > 
> > I agree that the DNS was never intended as a searching mechanism.? It
> > has always done "lookup", converting strings into IP addresses.
> > 
> > That's a view from the Technology side.? I was thinking as an end User,
> > where the History of the Internet looks somewhat different.
> 
> While users often misunderstand exact lookup from approximate search, I
> think the issue has always been present.  I don't think there is anything
> different now vs. 30 years ago, regarding this point.

There is nothing "principally" different, there only only everything
"practically" different to users. It is exactly like like comparing lookup/search
for anything in a freshly built town of a few thousand people with looking up /
searching something on the whole planet and not even knowing whether its a name from 
roman times.

Aka: Beside growth and increase of user confusion by more and more TLDs, 
there are also more and dead or reassigned/shared domains.

Would really be nice to have an eternal assignment history list of at least 2..3 level
deep. Public. Why isn't there a blockchain for domain assignments ? Done right, that
would give that functionality for free.


Toerless
---
tte at cs.fau.de


From johnl at iecc.com  Tue Feb  2 09:09:10 2021
From: johnl at iecc.com (John Levine)
Date: 2 Feb 2021 17:09:10 -0000
Subject: [ih] Funny how things work out and always end at blockchains
In-Reply-To: <e40b0d96-eed9-d0b1-7695-842c68b4ed67@dcrocker.net>
 <28a9425e-3bc8-212a-c851-c8636115b8a5@3kitty.org>
 <7a962efe-c130-fbc2-d3ac-befae1324fd3@3kitty.org>
 <20210202162957.GI35983@faui48f.informatik.uni-erlangen.de>
References: <e40b0d96-eed9-d0b1-7695-842c68b4ed67@dcrocker.net>
 <28a9425e-3bc8-212a-c851-c8636115b8a5@3kitty.org>
 <7a962efe-c130-fbc2-d3ac-befae1324fd3@3kitty.org>
 <20210202162957.GI35983@faui48f.informatik.uni-erlangen.de>
Message-ID: <rvc0vm$1f4s$1@gal.iecc.com>

In article <20210202162957.GI35983 at faui48f.informatik.uni-erlangen.de>,
Toerless Eckert via Internet-history <tte at cs.fau.de> wrote:
>Would really be nice to have an eternal assignment history list of at least 2..3 level
>deep. Public. Why isn't there a blockchain for domain assignments ? Done right, that
>would give that functionality for free.

I am amused at anything that puts "blockchain" and "free" in the same sentence, or that
assume that it scales up beyond a prototype.

Just out of curiosity, how do you plan to collect all of the changes at every second
or third level name server.  If you'd like public AXFR access to my servers, uh, no.

It makes much more sense to go in the other direction, domain names
are just tokens and you look for semantic meaning at other levels.

R's,
John Levine <johnl at 18.183.57.64.in-addr.arpa>
(try it)
-- 
Regards,
John Levine, johnl at taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly



From dhc at dcrocker.net  Tue Feb  2 09:31:00 2021
From: dhc at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker)
Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2021 09:31:00 -0800
Subject: [ih] Funny how things work out
In-Reply-To: <7f984413-f685-2712-286e-aa7c0e2e8e65@gmail.com>
References: <b6dae3ed-0aa5-62d1-79f7-e4e0f9a8599a@gmail.com>
 <602ecf76-3649-724b-eac7-23d6d1c44e17@dcrocker.net>
 <28a9425e-3bc8-212a-c851-c8636115b8a5@3kitty.org>
 <e40b0d96-eed9-d0b1-7695-842c68b4ed67@dcrocker.net>
 <7a962efe-c130-fbc2-d3ac-befae1324fd3@3kitty.org>
 <398BEF09-AB6B-4C51-A5E8-F05CAD7700CB@comcast.net>
 <ba73e9af-a3f5-b197-e411-1f9053e24e34@dcrocker.net>
 <677b776f-ef53-5aaa-7a00-694ce2ced3f6@gmail.com>
 <3b293338-1092-47ee-9100-c85a78f9cb59@dcrocker.net>
 <7f984413-f685-2712-286e-aa7c0e2e8e65@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <3baef0b0-cef7-2cde-b07b-f2305dfcdfef@dcrocker.net>

On 2/1/2021 8:29 PM, Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history wrote:
> On 02-Feb-21 15:14, Dave Crocker wrote:
>> Beyond possible waste and unpleasant emotion, how does this qualify for
>> more than a 'so what'?
> 
> Because it's become a method of wealth transfer which (whether or not you
> agree that it's corrupt) is clearly of no underlying productive value.
> The world would be no worse off if most of those TLDs did not exist,
> except that the millions of dollars paid to ICANN and various registrars
> would have been used otherwise. I don't think it's "possible" waste;
> it's definite waste, and probably wastes quite a bit of energy every day.
> 
> Admittedly, that's true of many of the things we do in the rich countries
> of the world.


Exactly.  Which means we need a degree of cost/benefit consideration to 
decide what issues warrant time and energy to fix or at least improve upon.

Even without John's economic assessment in this thread, it's clear this 
topic doesn't come close to being that interesting.

Silly, wasteful, emotional, possibly unfair.  Sure.  But meaningful and 
important? Probably not.


d/
-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net


From michael at kjorling.se  Tue Feb  2 09:42:08 2021
From: michael at kjorling.se (Michael =?utf-8?B?S2rDtnJsaW5n?=)
Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2021 17:42:08 +0000
Subject: [ih] Funny how things work out
In-Reply-To: <20210202162957.GI35983@faui48f.informatik.uni-erlangen.de>
References: <b6dae3ed-0aa5-62d1-79f7-e4e0f9a8599a@gmail.com>
 <602ecf76-3649-724b-eac7-23d6d1c44e17@dcrocker.net>
 <28a9425e-3bc8-212a-c851-c8636115b8a5@3kitty.org>
 <e40b0d96-eed9-d0b1-7695-842c68b4ed67@dcrocker.net>
 <7a962efe-c130-fbc2-d3ac-befae1324fd3@3kitty.org>
 <afe99600-95b8-6fe4-4311-c31b14d20044@dcrocker.net>
 <20210202162957.GI35983@faui48f.informatik.uni-erlangen.de>
Message-ID: <7975ab84-4ac2-41e8-8fc4-0ff51f3defaa@localhost>

On 2 Feb 2021 17:29 +0100, from internet-history at elists.isoc.org (Toerless Eckert via Internet-history):
> Would really be nice to have an eternal assignment history list of at least 2..3 level
> deep. Public. Why isn't there a blockchain for domain assignments ? Done right, that
> would give that functionality for free.

Besides the fact that this supposes that blockchains are free, which
John already noted (why, say $DEITY, is it so common for people to
jump to "blockchain" as their first tool of choice these days?),
there's now another way to get something fairly close to a list of
assigned _names_.

Certificate transparency logs.

Which are already considered trustworthy in other contexts that matter
far more, so shouldn't even come with any additional trust
requirements.

At least if you're interested in hosts that speak any variant of TLS,
and can live with the fact that wildcard certificates are, well, the
wild cards, that'll get you pretty far; the infrastructure is already
there; and they are already publicly available.

Once you have a DNS name, nothing prevents you from doing a DNS
lookup.

CT logs won't get you everything, but they _will_ get you a large
fraction of the names that the average Internet user is likely to
interact with. And if you don't think they're already being used for
these kinds of purposes, set up a web server at some randomly
generated virtual host name, get a TLS certificate from someplace like
Let's Encrypt, don't do anything else with that host name, and watch
the HTTP/S requests come in.

-- 
Michael Kj?rling ? https://michael.kjorling.se ? michael at kjorling.se
 ?Remember when, on the Internet, nobody cared that you were a dog??



From jack at 3kitty.org  Tue Feb  2 10:18:39 2021
From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)
Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2021 10:18:39 -0800
Subject: [ih] Funny how things work out
In-Reply-To: <3baef0b0-cef7-2cde-b07b-f2305dfcdfef@dcrocker.net>
References: <b6dae3ed-0aa5-62d1-79f7-e4e0f9a8599a@gmail.com>
 <602ecf76-3649-724b-eac7-23d6d1c44e17@dcrocker.net>
 <28a9425e-3bc8-212a-c851-c8636115b8a5@3kitty.org>
 <e40b0d96-eed9-d0b1-7695-842c68b4ed67@dcrocker.net>
 <7a962efe-c130-fbc2-d3ac-befae1324fd3@3kitty.org>
 <398BEF09-AB6B-4C51-A5E8-F05CAD7700CB@comcast.net>
 <ba73e9af-a3f5-b197-e411-1f9053e24e34@dcrocker.net>
 <677b776f-ef53-5aaa-7a00-694ce2ced3f6@gmail.com>
 <3b293338-1092-47ee-9100-c85a78f9cb59@dcrocker.net>
 <7f984413-f685-2712-286e-aa7c0e2e8e65@gmail.com>
 <3baef0b0-cef7-2cde-b07b-f2305dfcdfef@dcrocker.net>
Message-ID: <29eb9ac9-036c-2e15-ee9f-4696d9b0c76c@3kitty.org>

On 2/2/21 9:31 AM, Dave Crocker via Internet-history wrote:
> Silly, wasteful, emotional, possibly unfair.? Sure.? But meaningful
> and important? Probably not.

I agree, but, again thinking from the Users' perspective, there's still
a meaningful question:

WHY are people making decisions to spend, and continue to spend,
"millions of dollars" on something so "wasteful".? Do they not
understand the situation??? Or are they getting some kind of benefit
that we (I at least) don't see (perhaps "bragging rights" as an owner of
an "important" DNS name)??? Or do we not understand that such "waste" is
actually valuable.

This is of course just one question from the whole subject of the
Economics of the Internet - i.e., who pays for what, and why do they
decide to do so, and how has that evolved over time?

/Jack



From karl at cavebear.com  Tue Feb  2 12:29:42 2021
From: karl at cavebear.com (Karl Auerbach)
Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2021 12:29:42 -0800
Subject: [ih] Funny how things work out
In-Reply-To: <1D326355-D150-468A-AADC-A306A1717B10@mac.com>
References: <40FD280C-1C7E-4CCE-ACC5-4A1A79D77660@strayalpha.com>
 <1D326355-D150-468A-AADC-A306A1717B10@mac.com>
Message-ID: <eab4065d-d6c1-f75a-bca4-5e6ecb04e8a7@cavebear.com>


On 2/2/21 3:06 AM, John Lowry via Internet-history wrote:
>> Why not Cardullos.cambridge.ma.us <http://cardullos.boston.ci.ma.us/>?

And then there is the tale of asylum.sf.ca.us, a site run by John 
Romkey...? In the beginning it was physically a collection of computers 
and Telebit modems in his garage.

John was living in Belmont, California - a town on the San Francisco 
Peninsula, a bit north of Palo Alto.

Jon Postel was willing to allow Belmont to be part of the sf.ca.us domain.

Everything worked fine until John moved back to the Cambridge, 
Massachusetts area, taking the computers and modems with him.

He was not willing to change asylum to be in the cambridge.ma.us (or 
something like that) domain - it would have been confusing and a lot of 
work to change things.

So there it was, asylum.sf.ca.us plop down in the center of Cambridge Mass.

 ??? --karl--




From johnl at iecc.com  Tue Feb  2 12:42:38 2021
From: johnl at iecc.com (John Levine)
Date: 2 Feb 2021 15:42:38 -0500
Subject: [ih] Funny how things work out
In-Reply-To: <29eb9ac9-036c-2e15-ee9f-4696d9b0c76c@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <20210202204238.3F8E66D2E824@ary.qy>

In article <29eb9ac9-036c-2e15-ee9f-4696d9b0c76c at 3kitty.org> you write:
>WHY are people making decisions to spend, and continue to spend,
>"millions of dollars" on something so "wasteful".? Do they not
>understand the situation??? Or are they getting some kind of benefit
>that we (I at least) don't see (perhaps "bragging rights" as an owner of
>an "important" DNS name)??? Or do we not understand that such "waste" is
>actually valuable.

There's a couple of different questions there.

If you're asking about vanity (.brand) domains, I think Woody covered
it pretty well. I don't think they're good for the Internet but it's
easy to see why a large enough organization would think it worth $400K
or whatever to avoid depending on third party registries and
registrars.

I no longer even try to understand the economics of domain
speculation. About 20 years ago, some guy in Australia bought
gurus.com from my sister and me for $25K. It's been parked ever since.
Maybe they're hoping for some greater fool to come along, but it's
been a long wait. It's hard to imagine that whatever click revenue the
parking site gets has made a dent in $25K.

R's,
John


From johnl at iecc.com  Tue Feb  2 12:43:43 2021
From: johnl at iecc.com (John Levine)
Date: 2 Feb 2021 15:43:43 -0500
Subject: [ih] Funny how things work out
In-Reply-To: <eab4065d-d6c1-f75a-bca4-5e6ecb04e8a7@cavebear.com>
Message-ID: <20210202204344.110D66D2E854@ary.qy>

In article <eab4065d-d6c1-f75a-bca4-5e6ecb04e8a7 at cavebear.com> you write:
>So there it was, asylum.sf.ca.us plop down in the center of Cambridge Mass.

That's life.  iecc.cambridge.ma.us is now in upstate New York.



From geoff at iconia.com  Tue Feb  2 13:12:13 2021
From: geoff at iconia.com (the keyboard of geoff goodfellow)
Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2021 11:12:13 -1000
Subject: [ih] Funny how things work out
In-Reply-To: <eab4065d-d6c1-f75a-bca4-5e6ecb04e8a7@cavebear.com>
References: <40FD280C-1C7E-4CCE-ACC5-4A1A79D77660@strayalpha.com>
 <1D326355-D150-468A-AADC-A306A1717B10@mac.com>
 <eab4065d-d6c1-f75a-bca4-5e6ecb04e8a7@cavebear.com>
Message-ID: <CAEf-zrj9tZRT=uCxbZSLGC=Z82vy1wijuV4sn_+bi83Vdu06Dw@mail.gmail.com>

hmmm... that's Most Interesting Karl, as yours truly had a discussion with
Jon about the "Moving issue" in The Very Process of getting
fernwood.mpk.ca.us registered (as the first entry in the .us domain) was
what would happen if it moved/relocated elsewhere was that:

just as one can file a mail forwarding request with the USPS when moving an
"equivalent" would be done in the .us domain with a CNAME RR that would
point to your new .us domain location... say,  for the sake of an
illustrative example:

fernwood.mpk.ca.us ==> fernwood.cambridge.ma.us

geoff

On Tue, Feb 2, 2021 at 10:30 AM Karl Auerbach via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

>
> On 2/2/21 3:06 AM, John Lowry via Internet-history wrote:
> >> Why not Cardullos.cambridge.ma.us <http://cardullos.boston.ci.ma.us/>?
>
> And then there is the tale of asylum.sf.ca.us, a site run by John
> Romkey...  In the beginning it was physically a collection of computers
> and Telebit modems in his garage.
>
> John was living in Belmont, California - a town on the San Francisco
> Peninsula, a bit north of Palo Alto.
>
> Jon Postel was willing to allow Belmont to be part of the sf.ca.us domain.
>
> Everything worked fine until John moved back to the Cambridge,
> Massachusetts area, taking the computers and modems with him.
>
> He was not willing to change asylum to be in the cambridge.ma.us (or
> something like that) domain - it would have been confusing and a lot of
> work to change things.
>
> So there it was, asylum.sf.ca.us plop down in the center of Cambridge
> Mass.
>
>      --karl--
>
>
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>
>

-- 
Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com
living as The Truth is True


From joly at punkcast.com  Tue Feb  2 14:46:36 2021
From: joly at punkcast.com (Joly MacFie)
Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2021 17:46:36 -0500
Subject: [ih] =?utf-8?q?WEBCAST_TODAY_=E2=80=98Fireside_Chat_with_Vint_Ce?=
	=?utf-8?q?rf=E2=80=99_w/_Ken_Loparo?=
Message-ID: <CAM9VJk2GACkUQApU7HgmaZ+vdV0p0CBLynpiwoPgyHJOuenTMA@mail.gmail.com>

All these online events mean that Vint can't tell his favorite opening joke
- "Can you hear me at the back, No, we aren't built that way", but " Power
corrupts, and PowerPoint corrupts absolutely", if unspoken, is well in
effect.

ISOC Live posted: "On Tuesday 2 February 2021 at 5:30pm-7pm EST
(22:30-00:00 UTC) the IoT Collaborative (IOTC), the Cleveland State
University T.E.C.H Hub and the Institute for Smart, Secure and Connected
Systems (ISSACS) at Case Western Reserve University will host a 'Fire"


[image: livestream]
<http://livestream.com/internetsociety/cwru-vint>On *Tuesday
2 February 2021* at *5:30pm-7pm* *EST* (22:30-00:00 UTC) the *IoT
Collaborative <https://iotcollaborative.org/>* (IOTC), the *Cleveland State
University T.E.C.H Hub <https://www.csuohio.edu/techhub/techhub>* and
the *Institute
for Smart, Secure and Connected Systems <https://case.edu/issacs/> *(ISSACS)
at Case Western Reserve University will host a '*Fireside Chat with Vint
Cerf <https://community.case.edu/VealeInstitute/rsvp_boot?id=929383>*'.
Vint Cerf, the co-designer of TCP/IP protocols and the fundamental
architecture of the Internet. He will reflect on his career in technology,
share lessons learned, and discuss the challenges and opportunities he sees
for technology, from the Internet of Things to the Interplanetary Internet.

*SPEAKER*
*Vint Cerf*, Chief Internet Evangelist, Google

*MODERATOR*
*Dr. Ken Loparo*, Co-Academic Director of the IoT Collaborative / Faculty
Director for ISSAC, CWRU

*LIVESTREAM http://livestream.com/internetsociety/cwru-vint
<http://livestream.com/internetsociety/cwru-vint>*

*PARTICIPATE VIA ZOOM
https://community.case.edu/VealeInstitute/rsvp_boot?id=929383
<https://community.case.edu/VealeInstitute/rsvp_boot?id=929383>*

*TWITTER #vintcerf @vcerf #IoTCollaborative <https://bit.ly/3czsgX7> @cwru
@CLE_State @cwru_issacs*

*SIMULCASTS*
*https://www.facebook.com/IOTCollaborative/
<https://www.facebook.com/IOTCollaborative/>*
*https://www.pscp.tv/ISOC_Live/ <https://www.pscp.tv/ISOC_Live/>*
*https://www.twitch.tv/isoclive <https://www.twitch.tv/isoclive>*

*ARCHIVE*
*https://archive.org/details/cwru-vint
<https://archive.org/details/cwru-vint>*



*Permalink*
https://isoc.live/13702/



-

-- 
--------------------------------------
Joly MacFie  +12185659365
--------------------------------------
-


From dhc at dcrocker.net  Tue Feb  2 15:18:17 2021
From: dhc at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker)
Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2021 15:18:17 -0800
Subject: [ih] History of a domain name
In-Reply-To: <20210202162957.GI35983@faui48f.informatik.uni-erlangen.de>
References: <b6dae3ed-0aa5-62d1-79f7-e4e0f9a8599a@gmail.com>
 <602ecf76-3649-724b-eac7-23d6d1c44e17@dcrocker.net>
 <28a9425e-3bc8-212a-c851-c8636115b8a5@3kitty.org>
 <e40b0d96-eed9-d0b1-7695-842c68b4ed67@dcrocker.net>
 <7a962efe-c130-fbc2-d3ac-befae1324fd3@3kitty.org>
 <afe99600-95b8-6fe4-4311-c31b14d20044@dcrocker.net>
 <20210202162957.GI35983@faui48f.informatik.uni-erlangen.de>
Message-ID: <6f25d803-bdfb-7e2f-426a-a900f2410248@dcrocker.net>

On 2/2/2021 8:29 AM, Toerless Eckert wrote:
> Would really be nice to have an eternal assignment history list of at least 2..3 level
> deep. Public.


Separate from the technical debate about a particular approach for doing 
this, it strikes me that, as a matter of public policy, it would in fact 
be interesting to be able to find he history of a domain name.


d/

-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net


From rjoffe at centergate.com  Tue Feb  2 15:57:20 2021
From: rjoffe at centergate.com (Rodney Joffe)
Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2021 18:57:20 -0500
Subject: [ih] History of a domain name
In-Reply-To: <6f25d803-bdfb-7e2f-426a-a900f2410248@dcrocker.net>
References: <b6dae3ed-0aa5-62d1-79f7-e4e0f9a8599a@gmail.com>
 <602ecf76-3649-724b-eac7-23d6d1c44e17@dcrocker.net>
 <28a9425e-3bc8-212a-c851-c8636115b8a5@3kitty.org>
 <e40b0d96-eed9-d0b1-7695-842c68b4ed67@dcrocker.net>
 <7a962efe-c130-fbc2-d3ac-befae1324fd3@3kitty.org>
 <afe99600-95b8-6fe4-4311-c31b14d20044@dcrocker.net>
 <20210202162957.GI35983@faui48f.informatik.uni-erlangen.de>
 <6f25d803-bdfb-7e2f-426a-a900f2410248@dcrocker.net>
Message-ID: <313FD1EC-0528-455A-9F3A-9F147D1CFD45@centergate.com>


> On Feb 2, 2021, at 6:18 PM, Dave Crocker via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> On 2/2/2021 8:29 AM, Toerless Eckert wrote:
>> Would really be nice to have an eternal assignment history list of at least 2..3 level
>> deep. Public.
> 
> 
> Separate from the technical debate about a particular approach for doing this, it strikes me that, as a matter of public policy, it would in fact be interesting to be able to find he history of a domain name.
> 

If I am understanding the ask correctly, for relatively recent history (this century), the biggest resource I am aware of is housed by the folks who run DomainTools. A *very* commercial offering utilized predominantly by the IC and LE communities, and security researchers.

For the gtld?s, of course the other likely resources are the folks spun out of Internic - Network Solutions and Verisign. I would hope they kept all the records.

/rlj

From touch at strayalpha.com  Tue Feb  2 17:25:19 2021
From: touch at strayalpha.com (Joe Touch)
Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2021 17:25:19 -0800
Subject: [ih] History of a domain name
In-Reply-To: <6f25d803-bdfb-7e2f-426a-a900f2410248@dcrocker.net>
References: <6f25d803-bdfb-7e2f-426a-a900f2410248@dcrocker.net>
Message-ID: <81D9C082-8743-4AF7-B83A-62E9079DF122@strayalpha.com>



> On Feb 2, 2021, at 3:18 PM, Dave Crocker via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> ?On 2/2/2021 8:29 AM, Toerless Eckert wrote:
>> Would really be nice to have an eternal assignment history list of at least 2..3 level
>> deep. Public.
> 
> 
> Separate from the technical debate about a particular approach for doing this, it strikes me that, as a matter of public policy, it would in fact be interesting to be able to find he history of a domain name.

For some people, that?s just a beer chat topic. 

For others, it?s digging for the basis of a lawsuit.  

That?s at least part of why it can be difficult to find out. 

Joe


From gnu at toad.com  Tue Feb  2 18:02:33 2021
From: gnu at toad.com (John Gilmore)
Date: Tue, 02 Feb 2021 18:02:33 -0800
Subject: [ih] History of a domain name
In-Reply-To: <81D9C082-8743-4AF7-B83A-62E9079DF122@strayalpha.com> 
References: <6f25d803-bdfb-7e2f-426a-a900f2410248@dcrocker.net>
 <81D9C082-8743-4AF7-B83A-62E9079DF122@strayalpha.com>
Message-ID: <24022.1612317753@hop.toad.com>

> it would in fact be interesting to be able to find the history of a
> domain name.

There's a website for that.

  https://www.robtex.com/dns-lookup/elists.isoc.org

You may have to log in to it to see the history section.

	John


From johnl at iecc.com  Tue Feb  2 18:39:36 2021
From: johnl at iecc.com (John Levine)
Date: 2 Feb 2021 21:39:36 -0500
Subject: [ih] Funny how things work out
In-Reply-To: <CAEf-zrj9tZRT=uCxbZSLGC=Z82vy1wijuV4sn_+bi83Vdu06Dw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20210203023937.428726D4333C@ary.qy>

In article <CAEf-zrj9tZRT=uCxbZSLGC=Z82vy1wijuV4sn_+bi83Vdu06Dw at mail.gmail.com> you write:
>say,  for the sake of an illustrative example:
>
>fernwood.mpk.ca.us ==> fernwood.cambridge.ma.us

Seems to have happened, although a lot of the CNAMEs are lame now.

R's,
John

inwap.FREMONT.ca.us.	7200	IN	CNAME	c677793-a.FRMT1.SFBA.HOME.COM.
lieb.FREMONT.ca.us.	7200	IN	CNAME	suntan.FREMONT.ca.us.
www.liebs.FREMONT.ca.us. 7200	IN	CNAME	liebs.FREMONT.ca.us.
msjhs.FREMONT.ca.us.	7200	IN	CNAME	www.msjhs.ORG.
terry.FREMONT.ca.us.	7200	IN	CNAME	vhost.NETMUG.ORG.
cindy.irv.ca.us.	900	IN	CNAME	cindy.ics.uci.EDU.
radiomail.mpk.ca.us.	900	IN	CNAME	radiomail.NET.
ftp.red-bluff.ca.us.	900	IN	CNAME	www.red-bluff.ca.us.
pop.red-bluff.ca.us.	900	IN	CNAME	www.red-bluff.ca.us.
smtp.red-bluff.ca.us.	900	IN	CNAME	www.red-bluff.ca.us.
www.abeln.fort-lauderdale.fl.us. 900 IN	CNAME	abeln.fort-lauderdale.fl.us.
ftp.gary.in.us.		900	IN	CNAME	garyinweb.datamine.NET.
gary.in.us.gary.in.us.	900	IN	CNAME	garyinweb.datamine.NET.
www.gary.in.us.		900	IN	CNAME	garyinweb.datamine.NET.
www.KIDS.us.		3600	IN	CNAME	WS-PR-www-kids-us-2136635976.us-east-1.elb.amazonaws.com.
www.energize.ks.us.	900	IN	CNAME	www.energize.lawrence.ks.us.
www.port-allen.la.us.	900	IN	CNAME	home.verio.COM.
iecc.cambridge.ma.us.	900	IN	CNAME	ivan.iecc.COM.
next.cambridge.ma.us.	900	IN	CNAME	pleasant.pleasant.cambridge.ma.us.
k1bc.lex.ma.us.		900	IN	CNAME	k1bc.lexington.ma.us.
liquid.albany.ny.us.	900	IN	CNAME	lsd.ORG.
www.briarcliff-manor.ny.us. 900	IN	CNAME	briarcliff-manor.ny.us.
www.ithaca.ny.us.	900	IN	CNAME	fallcrk.tc.cornell.edu.
ns1.appliedtheory.com.nyc.ny.us. 900 IN	CNAME	NS1.APPLIEDTHEORY.COM.
ns2.appliedtheory.com.nyc.ny.us. 900 IN	CNAME	NS2.APPLIEDTHEORY.COM.
ns3.appliedtheory.com.nyc.ny.us. 900 IN	CNAME	NS3.APPLIEDTHEORY.COM.
www.nyc.ny.us.		900	IN	CNAME	nyc.ny.us.
www.bandon.or.us.	900	IN	CNAME	bandon.or.us.
philly.flp.lib.pa.us.	900	IN	CNAME	flpsys.library.phila.gov.
barrstl.scol.pa.us.	900	IN	CNAME	dsb100.sip.psu.EDU.
www.memphis.tn.us.	900	IN	CNAME	www.memphis.NET.
www.nashville.tn.us.	900	IN	CNAME	www.nashville.NET.
pigeonforge.tn.us.	900	IN	CNAME	pigeon-forge.tn.us.
calendar.home.AUSTIN.tx.us. 432000 IN	CNAME	ghs.google.com.
docs.home.AUSTIN.tx.us.	432000	IN	CNAME	ghs.google.com.
mail.home.AUSTIN.tx.us.	432000	IN	CNAME	ghs.google.com.
sites.home.AUSTIN.tx.us. 432000	IN	CNAME	ghs.google.com.
start.home.AUSTIN.tx.us. 432000	IN	CNAME	ghs.google.com.
www.home.AUSTIN.tx.us.	432000	IN	CNAME	ghs.google.com.
WHOIS.us.		300	IN	CNAME	whois.nic.us.
www.WHOIS.us.		300	IN	CNAME	whois.nic.us.


From jeanjour at comcast.net  Tue Feb  2 19:13:20 2021
From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day)
Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2021 22:13:20 -0500
Subject: [ih] Funny how things work out
In-Reply-To: <CAEf-zrhFNx_JED9AQpHdVg8QFKsHNUBrppwRhJpGByhRn53FBg@mail.gmail.com>
References: <b6dae3ed-0aa5-62d1-79f7-e4e0f9a8599a@gmail.com>
 <602ecf76-3649-724b-eac7-23d6d1c44e17@dcrocker.net>
 <28a9425e-3bc8-212a-c851-c8636115b8a5@3kitty.org>
 <e40b0d96-eed9-d0b1-7695-842c68b4ed67@dcrocker.net>
 <7a962efe-c130-fbc2-d3ac-befae1324fd3@3kitty.org>
 <398BEF09-AB6B-4C51-A5E8-F05CAD7700CB@comcast.net>
 <CAEf-zrhFNx_JED9AQpHdVg8QFKsHNUBrppwRhJpGByhRn53FBg@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <E489F1F2-B677-4C4E-9451-9BEC18BC25DC@comcast.net>



> On Feb 1, 2021, at 18:12, the keyboard of geoff goodfellow <geoff at iconia.com <mailto:geoff at iconia.com>> wrote:
> 
> just curious john, 
> vis-a-vis Cardullos.com <http://cardullos.com/>: "Why weren?t they asked to take Cardullos.ma.us <http://cardullos.ma.us/>?"
> 
> uhm, am curious to know just WHO would have done said asking?
> 
> furthermore vis-a-vis being asked to take Cardullos.ma.us <http://cardullos.ma.us/>: 
> 
> that actually would have been Cardullos.boston.ma.us <http://cardullos.boston.ma.us/> -- as when JonP setup the .us domain (for which my system fernwood.mpk.ca.us <http://fernwood.mpk.ca.us/> was the first host/domain registered in it) he mandated/decreed that registrations in the .us domain take the form of name.city.state.us <http://name.city.state.us/>.

Well, actually no.  As I said Cardullos is in Cambridge. I wouldn?t rule out them opening a branch in Waltham or Canton or other Boston burb, but I doubt they would open one in Oak Park   ;-)

I realize it is impractical for a lot of reasons but it would be nice.

John
> 
> and the kicker was that the city part of the us domain was taken from the TWX city code list of answer back codes...
> 
> how does yours truly know this, one might ask?
> 
> confession: it was yours truly who provided JonP with said TWX city code list of answer back code list. 
> 
> geoff
> 
> On Mon, Feb 1, 2021 at 12:49 PM John Day via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
> As long as we are harping on these sorts of things, I will throw in my pet peeve, not limiting a domain request to something reasonable. For example, there is small grocery in Harvard Square called Cardullos. They have Cardullos.com <http://cardullos.com/>. They are small, they will never be nationwide, let alone worldwide. Why weren?t they asked to take Cardullos.ma.us <http://cardullos.ma.us/>?  Now who knows how many other businesses the greater Cardullo family has spread around the world. ;-) But there might be other more common names where taking a more localized domain name would be better and save all of the hassle and legal fees when world-wide Smith Co. finds out that that Smith.com <http://smith.com/> is owned by a plumber in North Dakota. (I have no idea who has Smith.com <http://smith.com/>, but you get my point.) ;-)  Look at MacIntosh:  computers, amplifiers, raincoats, an actual kind of apple, and who knows what all else!
> 
> John
> 
> > On Feb 1, 2021, at 15:55, Jack Haverty via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
> > 
> > Hi Dave,
> > 
> > I agree that the DNS was never intended as a searching mechanism.  It
> > has always done "lookup", converting strings into IP addresses.  
> > 
> > That's a view from the Technology side.  I was thinking as an end User,
> > where the History of the Internet looks somewhat different.
> > 
> > From the User side, DNS also, at first, provided two other mechanisms
> > useful for Users - Delegation and Organization.  Delegation solved Jon's
> > problem, spreading out the work for managing the namespace to multiple
> > people and organizations.  Organization provided a means of structuring
> > the namespace so that it made some sense to Users.
> > 
> > As a User, I knew that a school site likely ended in .edu, a company
> > site in .com, a US government site in .gov, etc.  So instead of
> > "searching", a User knowing that old simple DNS organization of the name
> > space could guess that MIT was mit.edu <http://mit.edu/>, UCLA was ucla.edu <http://ucla.edu/>, yahoo was
> > yahoo.com <http://yahoo.com/>, Social Security was ssa.gov <http://ssa.gov/>, etc.   Names were predictable,
> > guessing was reliable enough.
> > 
> > That organizational structure broke as the Internet grew, and name
> > collisions became common (like my examples).  The growth worldwide made
> > the US-centric domain choices less palatable, and the explosion of TLDs
> > has made it almost impossible to understand or remember the structure of
> > the namespace or the "name" of a particular site.   Guessing and
> > predicting has become much less successful for the Users, and
> > remembering, even short-term, almost impossible.
> > 
> > So, IMHO, DNS still does an admirable job of maintaining and operating a
> > distributed database translating between "names" and "addresses", and
> > provides the mechanisms needed for delegation.  But its utility to Users
> > has decayed over time as the Internet grew.  It's now a mechanism for
> > translating between two obscure (to Users) character strings, one of
> > which (IP addresses) they rarely see.   DNS mechanisms are still an
> > important part of the internal machinery of the 'net, but DNS names seem
> > no longer very relevant as part of the "Internet UI".   Names are just
> > an arbitrary stringofcharacters that you have little need to remember or
> > type.
> > 
> > Since Marketing cares mostly about Customers (Users), that's what leads
> > me to wonder when the marketing forces will recognize that paying lots
> > of money to "protect the brand" in the DNS namespace is still worthwhile
> > -- except to the companies charging for the naming rights.
> > 
> > /Jack
> > 
> > 
> > On 2/1/21 10:58 AM, Dave Crocker wrote:
> >> On 2/1/2021 10:30 AM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
> >>> Fast forward to today, and I no longer have a clue what name to use to
> >>> find what I want online, and the proliferation of TLDs and explosion of
> >>> names isn't helping.
> >>> 
> >>> I'm wondering if, from the Users' perspective, the DNS mechanisms have
> >>> simply become unusable and irrelevant.
> >> 
> >> The model you describe is for searching.  The DNS doesn't do that.  It
> >> does lookup. As already noted, there's a basic difference between
> >> being able to guess a string versus being able to remember a string. 
> >> There's also a difference between longer-term vs. shorter-term
> >> remembering.
> >> 
> >> The mnemoics of domain names is useful for shorter-term remembering
> >> and sometimes useful for longer-term remembering.  Since it isn't
> >> intended for searching, there shouldn't be any surprise that it's
> >> terrible for that function.  Always has been.
> >> 
> >> 
> >>> So, as a user, I don't really care any more what the DNS "web address"
> >>> is, whether asiangarden.gv or 19876.weirdname.whatever.something.   I
> >>> never remember those, and never type them in anymore.
> >>> 
> >>> That's why I'm wondering if DNS and TLDs and all the name structure is
> >>> worth all the trouble anymore.  It's still useful as a level of
> >>> indirection to separate "names" from IP addresses that may change.   But
> >>> as a mnemonic for Users, it's devolved over time to become useless.  At
> >>> least for me...maybe other Users too?
> >>> 
> >>> I wonder when the "brand defenders" will realize this...funny how things
> >>> work out.
> >> 
> >> What you describe has always been true.  The problem has been the
> >> re-application of long-standin (pre-digital) brand protection models
> >> to this very different world.
> >> 
> >> d/
> >> 
> > 
> > -- 
> > Internet-history mailing list
> > Internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:Internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
> > https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history <https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history>
> 
> -- 
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:Internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history <https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history>
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com <mailto:Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com>
> living as The Truth is True
> 
> 
> 



From jeanjour at comcast.net  Tue Feb  2 19:13:52 2021
From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day)
Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2021 22:13:52 -0500
Subject: [ih] Funny how things work out
In-Reply-To: <CAEf-zrhFNx_JED9AQpHdVg8QFKsHNUBrppwRhJpGByhRn53FBg@mail.gmail.com>
References: <b6dae3ed-0aa5-62d1-79f7-e4e0f9a8599a@gmail.com>
 <602ecf76-3649-724b-eac7-23d6d1c44e17@dcrocker.net>
 <28a9425e-3bc8-212a-c851-c8636115b8a5@3kitty.org>
 <e40b0d96-eed9-d0b1-7695-842c68b4ed67@dcrocker.net>
 <7a962efe-c130-fbc2-d3ac-befae1324fd3@3kitty.org>
 <398BEF09-AB6B-4C51-A5E8-F05CAD7700CB@comcast.net>
 <CAEf-zrhFNx_JED9AQpHdVg8QFKsHNUBrppwRhJpGByhRn53FBg@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <B0BDA2E9-6723-4F31-AAF2-B8C13C829064@comcast.net>



> On Feb 1, 2021, at 18:12, the keyboard of geoff goodfellow <geoff at iconia.com <mailto:geoff at iconia.com>> wrote:
> 
> just curious john, 
> vis-a-vis Cardullos.com <http://cardullos.com/>: "Why weren?t they asked to take Cardullos.ma.us <http://cardullos.ma.us/>?"
> 
> uhm, am curious to know just WHO would have done said asking?
> 
> furthermore vis-a-vis being asked to take Cardullos.ma.us <http://cardullos.ma.us/>: 
> 
> that actually would have been Cardullos.boston.ma.us <http://cardullos.boston.ma.us/> -- as when JonP setup the .us domain (for which my system fernwood.mpk.ca.us <http://fernwood.mpk.ca.us/> was the first host/domain registered in it) he mandated/decreed that registrations in the .us domain take the form of name.city.state.us <http://name.city.state.us/>.

Well, actually no.  As I said Cardullos is in Cambridge. I wouldn?t rule out them opening a branch in Waltham or Canton or other Boston burb, but I doubt they would open one in Oak Park   ;-)

I realize it is impractical for a lot of reasons but it would be nice.

John
> 
> and the kicker was that the city part of the us domain was taken from the TWX city code list of answer back codes...
> 
> how does yours truly know this, one might ask?
> 
> confession: it was yours truly who provided JonP with said TWX city code list of answer back code list. 
> 
> geoff
> 
> On Mon, Feb 1, 2021 at 12:49 PM John Day via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
> As long as we are harping on these sorts of things, I will throw in my pet peeve, not limiting a domain request to something reasonable. For example, there is small grocery in Harvard Square called Cardullos. They have Cardullos.com <http://cardullos.com/>. They are small, they will never be nationwide, let alone worldwide. Why weren?t they asked to take Cardullos.ma.us <http://cardullos.ma.us/>?  Now who knows how many other businesses the greater Cardullo family has spread around the world. ;-) But there might be other more common names where taking a more localized domain name would be better and save all of the hassle and legal fees when world-wide Smith Co. finds out that that Smith.com <http://smith.com/> is owned by a plumber in North Dakota. (I have no idea who has Smith.com <http://smith.com/>, but you get my point.) ;-)  Look at MacIntosh:  computers, amplifiers, raincoats, an actual kind of apple, and who knows what all else!
> 
> John
> 
> > On Feb 1, 2021, at 15:55, Jack Haverty via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
> > 
> > Hi Dave,
> > 
> > I agree that the DNS was never intended as a searching mechanism.  It
> > has always done "lookup", converting strings into IP addresses.  
> > 
> > That's a view from the Technology side.  I was thinking as an end User,
> > where the History of the Internet looks somewhat different.
> > 
> > From the User side, DNS also, at first, provided two other mechanisms
> > useful for Users - Delegation and Organization.  Delegation solved Jon's
> > problem, spreading out the work for managing the namespace to multiple
> > people and organizations.  Organization provided a means of structuring
> > the namespace so that it made some sense to Users.
> > 
> > As a User, I knew that a school site likely ended in .edu, a company
> > site in .com, a US government site in .gov, etc.  So instead of
> > "searching", a User knowing that old simple DNS organization of the name
> > space could guess that MIT was mit.edu <http://mit.edu/>, UCLA was ucla.edu <http://ucla.edu/>, yahoo was
> > yahoo.com <http://yahoo.com/>, Social Security was ssa.gov <http://ssa.gov/>, etc.   Names were predictable,
> > guessing was reliable enough.
> > 
> > That organizational structure broke as the Internet grew, and name
> > collisions became common (like my examples).  The growth worldwide made
> > the US-centric domain choices less palatable, and the explosion of TLDs
> > has made it almost impossible to understand or remember the structure of
> > the namespace or the "name" of a particular site.   Guessing and
> > predicting has become much less successful for the Users, and
> > remembering, even short-term, almost impossible.
> > 
> > So, IMHO, DNS still does an admirable job of maintaining and operating a
> > distributed database translating between "names" and "addresses", and
> > provides the mechanisms needed for delegation.  But its utility to Users
> > has decayed over time as the Internet grew.  It's now a mechanism for
> > translating between two obscure (to Users) character strings, one of
> > which (IP addresses) they rarely see.   DNS mechanisms are still an
> > important part of the internal machinery of the 'net, but DNS names seem
> > no longer very relevant as part of the "Internet UI".   Names are just
> > an arbitrary stringofcharacters that you have little need to remember or
> > type.
> > 
> > Since Marketing cares mostly about Customers (Users), that's what leads
> > me to wonder when the marketing forces will recognize that paying lots
> > of money to "protect the brand" in the DNS namespace is still worthwhile
> > -- except to the companies charging for the naming rights.
> > 
> > /Jack
> > 
> > 
> > On 2/1/21 10:58 AM, Dave Crocker wrote:
> >> On 2/1/2021 10:30 AM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
> >>> Fast forward to today, and I no longer have a clue what name to use to
> >>> find what I want online, and the proliferation of TLDs and explosion of
> >>> names isn't helping.
> >>> 
> >>> I'm wondering if, from the Users' perspective, the DNS mechanisms have
> >>> simply become unusable and irrelevant.
> >> 
> >> The model you describe is for searching.  The DNS doesn't do that.  It
> >> does lookup. As already noted, there's a basic difference between
> >> being able to guess a string versus being able to remember a string. 
> >> There's also a difference between longer-term vs. shorter-term
> >> remembering.
> >> 
> >> The mnemoics of domain names is useful for shorter-term remembering
> >> and sometimes useful for longer-term remembering.  Since it isn't
> >> intended for searching, there shouldn't be any surprise that it's
> >> terrible for that function.  Always has been.
> >> 
> >> 
> >>> So, as a user, I don't really care any more what the DNS "web address"
> >>> is, whether asiangarden.gv or 19876.weirdname.whatever.something.   I
> >>> never remember those, and never type them in anymore.
> >>> 
> >>> That's why I'm wondering if DNS and TLDs and all the name structure is
> >>> worth all the trouble anymore.  It's still useful as a level of
> >>> indirection to separate "names" from IP addresses that may change.   But
> >>> as a mnemonic for Users, it's devolved over time to become useless.  At
> >>> least for me...maybe other Users too?
> >>> 
> >>> I wonder when the "brand defenders" will realize this...funny how things
> >>> work out.
> >> 
> >> What you describe has always been true.  The problem has been the
> >> re-application of long-standin (pre-digital) brand protection models
> >> to this very different world.
> >> 
> >> d/
> >> 
> > 
> > -- 
> > Internet-history mailing list
> > Internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:Internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
> > https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history <https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history>
> 
> -- 
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:Internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history <https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history>
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com <mailto:Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com>
> living as The Truth is True
> 
> 
> 



From touch at strayalpha.com  Tue Feb  2 19:56:56 2021
From: touch at strayalpha.com (Joseph Touch)
Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2021 19:56:56 -0800
Subject: [ih] Funny how things work out
In-Reply-To: <B0BDA2E9-6723-4F31-AAF2-B8C13C829064@comcast.net>
References: <b6dae3ed-0aa5-62d1-79f7-e4e0f9a8599a@gmail.com>
 <602ecf76-3649-724b-eac7-23d6d1c44e17@dcrocker.net>
 <28a9425e-3bc8-212a-c851-c8636115b8a5@3kitty.org>
 <e40b0d96-eed9-d0b1-7695-842c68b4ed67@dcrocker.net>
 <7a962efe-c130-fbc2-d3ac-befae1324fd3@3kitty.org>
 <398BEF09-AB6B-4C51-A5E8-F05CAD7700CB@comcast.net>
 <CAEf-zrhFNx_JED9AQpHdVg8QFKsHNUBrppwRhJpGByhRn53FBg@mail.gmail.com>
 <B0BDA2E9-6723-4F31-AAF2-B8C13C829064@comcast.net>
Message-ID: <7FC15BB4-7817-431D-8386-A89864630CEF@strayalpha.com>



> On Feb 2, 2021, at 7:13 PM, John Day via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
>> that actually would have been Cardullos.boston.ma.us <http://cardullos.boston.ma.us/> <http://cardullos.boston.ma.us/ <http://cardullos.boston.ma.us/>> -- as when JonP setup the .us domain (for which my system fernwood.mpk.ca.us <http://fernwood.mpk.ca.us/> <http://fernwood.mpk.ca.us/ <http://fernwood.mpk.ca.us/>> was the first host/domain registered in it) he mandated/decreed that registrations in the .us domain take the form of name.city.state.us <http://name.city.state.us/> <http://name.city.state.us/ <http://name.city.state.us/>>.
> 
> Well, actually no.  As I said Cardullos is in Cambridge.

https://cardullos.com <https://cardullos.com/>

Scroll down. They have two locations.



From geoff at iconia.com  Tue Feb  2 22:17:46 2021
From: geoff at iconia.com (the keyboard of geoff goodfellow)
Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2021 20:17:46 -1000
Subject: [ih] Funny how things work out
In-Reply-To: <20210203023937.428726D4333C@ary.qy>
References: <CAEf-zrj9tZRT=uCxbZSLGC=Z82vy1wijuV4sn_+bi83Vdu06Dw@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210203023937.428726D4333C@ary.qy>
Message-ID: <CAEf-zrgJhHqCp5OyOo3_28UfWFvsiG9nsyzXL22WuQyfVDJtHw@mail.gmail.com>

yup, and (still) works perfectly: as one can send mail to
geoff at radiomail.mpk.ca.us which then gets summarily CNAME'd to radiomail.net
(and in the process picks up radiomail.net's MX record) and delivers it to
me on strange.networkguild.org's server, viz.:

radiomail.mpk.ca.us.    900     IN      CNAME   radiomail.NET.

sdf% mail geoff at radiomail.mpk.ca.us

Subject: foo

bar

EOT

sdf% host radiomail.mpk.ca.us

radiomail.mpk.ca.us is an alias for radiomail.net.

radiomail.net has address 66.228.61.115

radiomail.net mail is handled by 20 strange.networkguild.org.

sdf%

On Tue, Feb 2, 2021 at 4:40 PM John Levine <johnl at iecc.com> wrote:

> In article <CAEf-zrj9tZRT=uCxbZSLGC=
> Z82vy1wijuV4sn_+bi83Vdu06Dw at mail.gmail.com> you write:
> >say,  for the sake of an illustrative example:
> >
> >fernwood.mpk.ca.us ==> fernwood.cambridge.ma.us
>
> Seems to have happened, although a lot of the CNAMEs are lame now.
>
> R's,
> John
>
> inwap.FREMONT.ca.us.    7200    IN      CNAME
> c677793-a.FRMT1.SFBA.HOME.COM.
> lieb.FREMONT.ca.us.     7200    IN      CNAME   suntan.FREMONT.ca.us.
> www.liebs.FREMONT.ca.us. 7200   IN      CNAME   liebs.FREMONT.ca.us.
> msjhs.FREMONT.ca.us.    7200    IN      CNAME   www.msjhs.ORG.
> terry.FREMONT.ca.us.    7200    IN      CNAME   vhost.NETMUG.ORG.
> cindy.irv.ca.us.        900     IN      CNAME   cindy.ics.uci.EDU.
> radiomail.mpk.ca.us.    900     IN      CNAME   radiomail.NET.
> ftp.red-bluff.ca.us.    900     IN      CNAME   www.red-bluff.ca.us.
> pop.red-bluff.ca.us.    900     IN      CNAME   www.red-bluff.ca.us.
> smtp.red-bluff.ca.us.   900     IN      CNAME   www.red-bluff.ca.us.
> www.abeln.fort-lauderdale.fl.us. 900 IN CNAME
> abeln.fort-lauderdale.fl.us.
> ftp.gary.in.us.         900     IN      CNAME   garyinweb.datamine.NET.
> gary.in.us.gary.in.us.  900     IN      CNAME   garyinweb.datamine.NET.
> www.gary.in.us.         900     IN      CNAME   garyinweb.datamine.NET.
> www.KIDS.us.            3600    IN      CNAME
> WS-PR-www-kids-us-2136635976.us-east-1.elb.amazonaws.com.
> www.energize.ks.us.     900     IN      CNAME
> www.energize.lawrence.ks.us.
> www.port-allen.la.us.   900     IN      CNAME   home.verio.COM.
> iecc.cambridge.ma.us.   900     IN      CNAME   ivan.iecc.COM.
> next.cambridge.ma.us.   900     IN      CNAME
> pleasant.pleasant.cambridge.ma.us.
> k1bc.lex.ma.us.         900     IN      CNAME   k1bc.lexington.ma.us.
> liquid.albany.ny.us.    900     IN      CNAME   lsd.ORG.
> www.briarcliff-manor.ny.us. 900 IN      CNAME   briarcliff-manor.ny.us.
> www.ithaca.ny.us.       900     IN      CNAME   fallcrk.tc.cornell.edu.
> ns1.appliedtheory.com.nyc.ny.us. 900 IN CNAME   NS1.APPLIEDTHEORY.COM.
> ns2.appliedtheory.com.nyc.ny.us. 900 IN CNAME   NS2.APPLIEDTHEORY.COM.
> ns3.appliedtheory.com.nyc.ny.us. 900 IN CNAME   NS3.APPLIEDTHEORY.COM.
> www.nyc.ny.us.          900     IN      CNAME   nyc.ny.us.
> www.bandon.or.us.       900     IN      CNAME   bandon.or.us.
> philly.flp.lib.pa.us.   900     IN      CNAME   flpsys.library.phila.gov.
> barrstl.scol.pa.us.     900     IN      CNAME   dsb100.sip.psu.EDU.
> www.memphis.tn.us.      900     IN      CNAME   www.memphis.NET.
> www.nashville.tn.us.    900     IN      CNAME   www.nashville.NET.
> pigeonforge.tn.us.      900     IN      CNAME   pigeon-forge.tn.us.
> calendar.home.AUSTIN.tx.us. 432000 IN   CNAME   ghs.google.com.
> docs.home.AUSTIN.tx.us. 432000  IN      CNAME   ghs.google.com.
> mail.home.AUSTIN.tx.us. 432000  IN      CNAME   ghs.google.com.
> sites.home.AUSTIN.tx.us. 432000 IN      CNAME   ghs.google.com.
> start.home.AUSTIN.tx.us. 432000 IN      CNAME   ghs.google.com.
> www.home.AUSTIN.tx.us.  432000  IN      CNAME   ghs.google.com.
> WHOIS.us.               300     IN      CNAME   whois.nic.us.
> www.WHOIS.us.           300     IN      CNAME   whois.nic.us.
>
>

-- 
Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com
living as The Truth is True


From johnl at iecc.com  Wed Feb  3 07:48:12 2021
From: johnl at iecc.com (John R. Levine)
Date: 3 Feb 2021 10:48:12 -0500
Subject: [ih] Funny how things work out
In-Reply-To: <CAEf-zrgJhHqCp5OyOo3_28UfWFvsiG9nsyzXL22WuQyfVDJtHw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAEf-zrj9tZRT=uCxbZSLGC=Z82vy1wijuV4sn_+bi83Vdu06Dw@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210203023937.428726D4333C@ary.qy>
 <CAEf-zrgJhHqCp5OyOo3_28UfWFvsiG9nsyzXL22WuQyfVDJtHw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <c9c9f07-9d-bb9c-f9ee-27737e784e70@johnlevine.com>

> geoff at radiomail.mpk.ca.us which then gets summarily CNAME'd to radiomail.net
> (and in the process picks up radiomail.net's MX record) and delivers it to
> me on strange.networkguild.org's server, viz.:
>
> radiomail.mpk.ca.us.    900     IN      CNAME   radiomail.NET.

$ host iecc.cambridge.ma.us
iecc.cambridge.ma.us is an alias for ivan.iecc.com.
ivan.iecc.com has address 64.57.183.33
ivan.iecc.com mail is handled by 1 ivan.iecc.com.

Mine works too, but it gets 100% spam now so I've routed it into a 
spamtrap.

>
> sdf% mail geoff at radiomail.mpk.ca.us
>
> Subject: foo
>
> bar
>
> EOT
>
> sdf% host radiomail.mpk.ca.us
>
> radiomail.mpk.ca.us is an alias for radiomail.net.
>
> radiomail.net has address 66.228.61.115
>
> radiomail.net mail is handled by 20 strange.networkguild.org.
>
> sdf%
>
> On Tue, Feb 2, 2021 at 4:40 PM John Levine <johnl at iecc.com> wrote:
>
>> In article <CAEf-zrj9tZRT=uCxbZSLGC=
>> Z82vy1wijuV4sn_+bi83Vdu06Dw at mail.gmail.com> you write:
>>> say,  for the sake of an illustrative example:
>>>
>>> fernwood.mpk.ca.us ==> fernwood.cambridge.ma.us
>>
>> Seems to have happened, although a lot of the CNAMEs are lame now.
>>
>> R's,
>> John
>>
>> inwap.FREMONT.ca.us.    7200    IN      CNAME
>> c677793-a.FRMT1.SFBA.HOME.COM.
>> lieb.FREMONT.ca.us.     7200    IN      CNAME   suntan.FREMONT.ca.us.
>> www.liebs.FREMONT.ca.us. 7200   IN      CNAME   liebs.FREMONT.ca.us.
>> msjhs.FREMONT.ca.us.    7200    IN      CNAME   www.msjhs.ORG.
>> terry.FREMONT.ca.us.    7200    IN      CNAME   vhost.NETMUG.ORG.
>> cindy.irv.ca.us.        900     IN      CNAME   cindy.ics.uci.EDU.
>> radiomail.mpk.ca.us.    900     IN      CNAME   radiomail.NET.
>> ftp.red-bluff.ca.us.    900     IN      CNAME   www.red-bluff.ca.us.
>> pop.red-bluff.ca.us.    900     IN      CNAME   www.red-bluff.ca.us.
>> smtp.red-bluff.ca.us.   900     IN      CNAME   www.red-bluff.ca.us.
>> www.abeln.fort-lauderdale.fl.us. 900 IN CNAME
>> abeln.fort-lauderdale.fl.us.
>> ftp.gary.in.us.         900     IN      CNAME   garyinweb.datamine.NET.
>> gary.in.us.gary.in.us.  900     IN      CNAME   garyinweb.datamine.NET.
>> www.gary.in.us.         900     IN      CNAME   garyinweb.datamine.NET.
>> www.KIDS.us.            3600    IN      CNAME
>> WS-PR-www-kids-us-2136635976.us-east-1.elb.amazonaws.com.
>> www.energize.ks.us.     900     IN      CNAME
>> www.energize.lawrence.ks.us.
>> www.port-allen.la.us.   900     IN      CNAME   home.verio.COM.
>> iecc.cambridge.ma.us.   900     IN      CNAME   ivan.iecc.COM.
>> next.cambridge.ma.us.   900     IN      CNAME
>> pleasant.pleasant.cambridge.ma.us.
>> k1bc.lex.ma.us.         900     IN      CNAME   k1bc.lexington.ma.us.
>> liquid.albany.ny.us.    900     IN      CNAME   lsd.ORG.
>> www.briarcliff-manor.ny.us. 900 IN      CNAME   briarcliff-manor.ny.us.
>> www.ithaca.ny.us.       900     IN      CNAME   fallcrk.tc.cornell.edu.
>> ns1.appliedtheory.com.nyc.ny.us. 900 IN CNAME   NS1.APPLIEDTHEORY.COM.
>> ns2.appliedtheory.com.nyc.ny.us. 900 IN CNAME   NS2.APPLIEDTHEORY.COM.
>> ns3.appliedtheory.com.nyc.ny.us. 900 IN CNAME   NS3.APPLIEDTHEORY.COM.
>> www.nyc.ny.us.          900     IN      CNAME   nyc.ny.us.
>> www.bandon.or.us.       900     IN      CNAME   bandon.or.us.
>> philly.flp.lib.pa.us.   900     IN      CNAME   flpsys.library.phila.gov.
>> barrstl.scol.pa.us.     900     IN      CNAME   dsb100.sip.psu.EDU.
>> www.memphis.tn.us.      900     IN      CNAME   www.memphis.NET.
>> www.nashville.tn.us.    900     IN      CNAME   www.nashville.NET.
>> pigeonforge.tn.us.      900     IN      CNAME   pigeon-forge.tn.us.
>> calendar.home.AUSTIN.tx.us. 432000 IN   CNAME   ghs.google.com.
>> docs.home.AUSTIN.tx.us. 432000  IN      CNAME   ghs.google.com.
>> mail.home.AUSTIN.tx.us. 432000  IN      CNAME   ghs.google.com.
>> sites.home.AUSTIN.tx.us. 432000 IN      CNAME   ghs.google.com.
>> start.home.AUSTIN.tx.us. 432000 IN      CNAME   ghs.google.com.
>> www.home.AUSTIN.tx.us.  432000  IN      CNAME   ghs.google.com.
>> WHOIS.us.               300     IN      CNAME   whois.nic.us.
>> www.WHOIS.us.           300     IN      CNAME   whois.nic.us.
>>
>>
>
>

Regards,
John Levine, johnl at taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly


From johnl at iecc.com  Wed Feb  3 10:14:47 2021
From: johnl at iecc.com (John Levine)
Date: 3 Feb 2021 13:14:47 -0500
Subject: [ih] Funny how things work out
In-Reply-To: <7FC15BB4-7817-431D-8386-A89864630CEF@strayalpha.com>
Message-ID: <20210203181447.3C8AF6D51234@ary.qy>

In article <7FC15BB4-7817-431D-8386-A89864630CEF at strayalpha.com> you write:
>> Well, actually no.  As I said Cardullos is in Cambridge.
>
>https://cardullos.com <https://cardullos.com/>
>
>Scroll down. They have two locations.

They may now but they didn't back in the 1990s.

R's,
John


From bill.n1vux at gmail.com  Wed Feb  3 12:41:21 2021
From: bill.n1vux at gmail.com (Bill Ricker)
Date: Wed, 3 Feb 2021 15:41:21 -0500
Subject: [ih] Funny how things work out
In-Reply-To: <20210203181447.3C8AF6D51234@ary.qy>
References: <7FC15BB4-7817-431D-8386-A89864630CEF@strayalpha.com>
 <20210203181447.3C8AF6D51234@ary.qy>
Message-ID: <CAAbKA3X+aSJqnFjPS=y586PhNqf2kHivm6n1Dc6NACZuKrxOJw@mail.gmail.com>

On Wed, Feb 3, 2021 at 1:15 PM John Levine via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> >> Well, actually no.  As I said Cardullos is in Cambridge.
> >
> >https://cardullos.com <https://cardullos.com/>
> >
> >Scroll down. They have two locations.
>
> They may now but they didn't back in the 1990s.
>

Correct.
The South Boston Seaport location is a very recent expansion into the new
trendy area with plenty of disposable income.

(When  i last worked in Seaport in '13, that address was still in the
process of transforming from a parking lot into a multi-use block. Which is
a good thing; eating lunch are Cardullos daily would've broken my budget
:-D.  Although the real expense when i last worked in Cambride was not the
lunches but the used bookstores or tech bookstore that I had to pass to get
to the sandwich shop.)

A lot of Boston-area non-tech firms and charities grabbed their ${name}.com
or ${TLA}.org because their well-networked customers / board members told
them it was a good idea to do so ahead of the curve.
Hence  mos.org is here, mfa.org is here, cardullos.com is here. (I presume
it was similar in silly valley.)
A few MMA museums may be annoyed that Mass Muni Assoc got mma.org first.
Ya snooze, ya lose.

(Also I'll note that there's no rule against a .gov eligible entity having
a .com ; Mass Bay Transit Authority has MBTA.com which is good because of
the browser tendency to assume .com if no TLD provided.)

-- 
Bill Ricker
bill.n1vux at gmail.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/n1vux


From dan at lynch.com  Thu Feb  4 17:41:54 2021
From: dan at lynch.com (Dan Lynch)
Date: Thu, 4 Feb 2021 17:41:54 -0800
Subject: [ih] Funny how things work out
In-Reply-To: <398BEF09-AB6B-4C51-A5E8-F05CAD7700CB@comcast.net>
References: <398BEF09-AB6B-4C51-A5E8-F05CAD7700CB@comcast.net>
Message-ID: <1D0441B2-3FF8-450B-A3FA-DCED1672AA32@lynch.com>

I got lynch.com back long ago. I use it solely to let my family members have that vanity address for email if they wish. To that end I have had to (pay for) the operation of a mail server for decades. And a few times a year I get an inquiry about selling the name. From Lynch businesses that want that address. I turn them all down politely. Recently I passed the baton to a family member. 

Was it worth it?  Barely...

I remember when business.com sold for $7 million. I know the seller and the buyer. I told the buyer he was nuts. Told the seller he was brilliant and lucky. He had, in the early days, bought up a few hundred domains like that and I don?t know if he ever sold another like that. But $7 million on a few thousand dollars invested is a great return, eh?  

I also remember that Jake did all this for a few dollars a year at SRI. 

Dan

Cell 650-776-7313

> On Feb 1, 2021, at 2:49 PM, John Day via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> ?As long as we are harping on these sorts of things, I will throw in my pet peeve, not limiting a domain request to something reasonable. For example, there is small grocery in Harvard Square called Cardullos. They have Cardullos.com. They are small, they will never be nationwide, let alone worldwide. Why weren?t they asked to take Cardullos.ma.us?  Now who knows how many other businesses the greater Cardullo family has spread around the world. ;-) But there might be other more common names where taking a more localized domain name would be better and save all of the hassle and legal fees when world-wide Smith Co. finds out that that Smith.com is owned by a plumber in North Dakota. (I have no idea who has Smith.com, but you get my point.) ;-)  Look at MacIntosh:  computers, amplifiers, raincoats, an actual kind of apple, and who knows what all else!
> 
> John
> 
>> On Feb 1, 2021, at 15:55, Jack Haverty via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>> 
>> Hi Dave,
>> 
>> I agree that the DNS was never intended as a searching mechanism.  It
>> has always done "lookup", converting strings into IP addresses.  
>> 
>> That's a view from the Technology side.  I was thinking as an end User,
>> where the History of the Internet looks somewhat different.
>> 
>> From the User side, DNS also, at first, provided two other mechanisms
>> useful for Users - Delegation and Organization.  Delegation solved Jon's
>> problem, spreading out the work for managing the namespace to multiple
>> people and organizations.  Organization provided a means of structuring
>> the namespace so that it made some sense to Users.
>> 
>> As a User, I knew that a school site likely ended in .edu, a company
>> site in .com, a US government site in .gov, etc.  So instead of
>> "searching", a User knowing that old simple DNS organization of the name
>> space could guess that MIT was mit.edu, UCLA was ucla.edu, yahoo was
>> yahoo.com, Social Security was ssa.gov, etc.   Names were predictable,
>> guessing was reliable enough.
>> 
>> That organizational structure broke as the Internet grew, and name
>> collisions became common (like my examples).  The growth worldwide made
>> the US-centric domain choices less palatable, and the explosion of TLDs
>> has made it almost impossible to understand or remember the structure of
>> the namespace or the "name" of a particular site.   Guessing and
>> predicting has become much less successful for the Users, and
>> remembering, even short-term, almost impossible.
>> 
>> So, IMHO, DNS still does an admirable job of maintaining and operating a
>> distributed database translating between "names" and "addresses", and
>> provides the mechanisms needed for delegation.  But its utility to Users
>> has decayed over time as the Internet grew.  It's now a mechanism for
>> translating between two obscure (to Users) character strings, one of
>> which (IP addresses) they rarely see.   DNS mechanisms are still an
>> important part of the internal machinery of the 'net, but DNS names seem
>> no longer very relevant as part of the "Internet UI".   Names are just
>> an arbitrary stringofcharacters that you have little need to remember or
>> type.
>> 
>> Since Marketing cares mostly about Customers (Users), that's what leads
>> me to wonder when the marketing forces will recognize that paying lots
>> of money to "protect the brand" in the DNS namespace is still worthwhile
>> -- except to the companies charging for the naming rights.
>> 
>> /Jack
>> 
>> 
>>> On 2/1/21 10:58 AM, Dave Crocker wrote:
>>> On 2/1/2021 10:30 AM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
>>>> Fast forward to today, and I no longer have a clue what name to use to
>>>> find what I want online, and the proliferation of TLDs and explosion of
>>>> names isn't helping.
>>>> 
>>>> I'm wondering if, from the Users' perspective, the DNS mechanisms have
>>>> simply become unusable and irrelevant.
>>> 
>>> The model you describe is for searching.  The DNS doesn't do that.  It
>>> does lookup. As already noted, there's a basic difference between
>>> being able to guess a string versus being able to remember a string. 
>>> There's also a difference between longer-term vs. shorter-term
>>> remembering.
>>> 
>>> The mnemoics of domain names is useful for shorter-term remembering
>>> and sometimes useful for longer-term remembering.  Since it isn't
>>> intended for searching, there shouldn't be any surprise that it's
>>> terrible for that function.  Always has been.
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> So, as a user, I don't really care any more what the DNS "web address"
>>>> is, whether asiangarden.gv or 19876.weirdname.whatever.something.   I
>>>> never remember those, and never type them in anymore.
>>>> 
>>>> That's why I'm wondering if DNS and TLDs and all the name structure is
>>>> worth all the trouble anymore.  It's still useful as a level of
>>>> indirection to separate "names" from IP addresses that may change.   But
>>>> as a mnemonic for Users, it's devolved over time to become useless.  At
>>>> least for me...maybe other Users too?
>>>> 
>>>> I wonder when the "brand defenders" will realize this...funny how things
>>>> work out.
>>> 
>>> What you describe has always been true.  The problem has been the
>>> re-application of long-standin (pre-digital) brand protection models
>>> to this very different world.
>>> 
>>> d/
>>> 
>> 
>> -- 
>> Internet-history mailing list
>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> 
> -- 
> Internet-history mailing list
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> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history



From york at isoc.org  Sat Feb  6 09:18:37 2021
From: york at isoc.org (Dan York)
Date: Sat, 6 Feb 2021 17:18:37 +0000
Subject: [ih] FYI - Richard McManus' "Web Development History" project
Message-ID: <E87A0FFE-FA4D-4C89-AB04-037907009666@isoc.org>

Purely FYI ? if you are not already aware, Richard McManus (founder of ReadWriteWeb[1]) has started a new side project to chronicle the history of the web from a development perspective. You can read more in this thread on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/ricmac/status/1346509223182548993

And his site with articles is at: https://webdevelopmenthistory.com/

While he seems to plan to focus on the history of the *web* versus of the Internet, he does blur the distinction in his writing and a couple of his articles have already focused on Douglas Engelbart and some of that early online history (labeled as ?Pre-History? in his tagging).

Anyway, if any of you are interested in following the project, there?s an email list and RSS feed as well as specific Twitter and Facebook feeds.

Dan

[1] I was a big fan of ?RWW? when it began in the early 2000s because it was one of the media sites focused on the technology and development sides of the Web. After it was sold in 2011 and McManus left in 2012, it took a different direction.

--
Dan York, Director, Online Content / Project Leader, Open Standards Everywhere<https://www.internetsociety.org/issues/open-standards-everywhere/> / Internet Society
york at isoc.org<mailto:york at isoc.org> | +1-603-439-0024 | @danyork<https://twitter.com/danyork>

[cid:image001.png at 01D5D03B.DF736FF0]
internetsociety.org<https://www.internetsociety.org/> | @internetsociety<https://twitter.com/internetsociety>


From york at isoc.org  Fri Feb 26 06:39:23 2021
From: york at isoc.org (Dan York)
Date: Fri, 26 Feb 2021 14:39:23 +0000
Subject: [ih] Internet Hall of Fame (IHOF) nominations now open - know
 anyone who should be nominated?
Message-ID: <EA79B046-2075-42B1-8D91-2BEA875B0892@isoc.org>

Hi all,

The Internet Hall of Fame (IHOF) has opened up the call for nominations for the 2021 inductees:
https://www.internethalloffame.org/blog/2021/02/23/internet-hall-fame-nominations-open-until-april-23

If you know of someone who has done important work for the Internet who should be recognized as part of IHOF, please consider nominating that person.  I figured this group might know some people who are not yet in the inductees: https://www.internethalloffame.org/inductees

The direct nomination form is at:

https://www.internethalloffame.org/nominations

On a related note, if any of you are able to help us share the word, too, so that we can find nominees from all across the world and across industries and business/nonprofit sectors, that would be greatly appreciated. If you share content on social networks, you can find some links to share at:

https://twitter.com/Internet_HOF
https://www.facebook.com/InternetHallofFame/

Thanks,
Dan

--
Dan York, Director, Online Content / Internet Society
york at isoc.org<mailto:york at isoc.org> | +1-603-439-0024 | @danyork<https://twitter.com/danyork>

[cid:image001.png at 01D5D03B.DF736FF0]
internetsociety.org<https://www.internetsociety.org/> | @internetsociety<https://twitter.com/internetsociety>



From venture37 at geeklan.co.uk  Sat Feb 27 12:57:52 2021
From: venture37 at geeklan.co.uk (Sevan Janiyan)
Date: Sat, 27 Feb 2021 20:57:52 +0000
Subject: [ih] Why is MAXNS set to 3
Message-ID: <43a15446-9a4d-cf51-f51a-2cd51c8b6b39@geeklan.co.uk>

Hello,
Long time lurker but this is my first post to the list. :)
I was wondering if there was a technical reason why MAXNS is set to 3
for the libc resolver in resolv.h (inherited from BIND and others
followed suit (like glibc)). Everyone states MAXNS is set to 3 in
documentation but no one says why it is 3 (if it's not arbitrary) by
default.  :)


Sevan


From kevin at dunlap.org  Sun Feb 28 09:07:37 2021
From: kevin at dunlap.org (Kevin Dunlap)
Date: Sun, 28 Feb 2021 09:07:37 -0800
Subject: [ih] Why is MAXNS set to 3
In-Reply-To: <43a15446-9a4d-cf51-f51a-2cd51c8b6b39@geeklan.co.uk>
References: <43a15446-9a4d-cf51-f51a-2cd51c8b6b39@geeklan.co.uk>
Message-ID: <177e99c17a8.2818.808948fe1d1f5e4496f3ab3e81db1bfd@dunlap.org>

Someone pointed out to me that I did the code check-in to the source code 
repository for UC Berkeley CSRG (BSD) in October 1985.
Code change set MAXNS to 3.  Now someone over 35 years is questions why.
I would say setting it to 3 has stood the test of time.

MAXNS is in the resolver code, designed to be fairly light weight since it 
lives in libC.
If you wanted DNS caching you put a recursive caching only name server on 
the local system that would do all the real resolution work and cache the 
results for other DNS resolutions.
Back in 1985 named, name server, would occasionally crash. So by setting 
MAXNS to three would give the resolver the opportunity to try the localhost 
name server and two backups.  Hopefully, you set the two backup nameservers 
to ones in you LAN. Setting to nameservers across the internet would not 
result in speedy name resolution.

-Kevin
Formally, kjd at monet.Berkeley.EDU
On February 27, 2021 1:33:44 PM Sevan Janiyan via Internet-history 
<internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Hello,
> Long time lurker but this is my first post to the list. :)
> I was wondering if there was a technical reason why MAXNS is set to 3
> for the libc resolver in resolv.h (inherited from BIND and others
> followed suit (like glibc)). Everyone states MAXNS is set to 3 in
> documentation but no one says why it is 3 (if it's not arbitrary) by
> default.  :)
>
>
> Sevan
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history