[ih] Internet should be in private hands

[Craig Partridge]

On Thu, Dec 8, 2022 at 12:59 AM George Ross via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

>
> The naming scheme which JANET-attached Universties used did start with
> "uk"
> rather than "gb" -- we were uk.ac.ed.cs.  That was in place before we
> joined the IP internet and started using the DNS too, and I suspect the
> prospect of sites having two different names or else having to change the
> JANET scheme, which was much more heavily used than the DNS at the time,
> didn't appeal, in addition to the political sensitivities.
>
> We renamed ourselves as dcs.ed.ac.uk shortly after, to avoid confusion in
> the mail gateways, as .CS was a ccTLD.
>

Quick gloss on George's note for those who weren't there.  The UK, due to
JANET or simply a magnetic attraction to doing things the opposite way from
most folks, initially had domain names with the TLD first.

This meant a bunch of Internet email systems had a "both-ways" switch that
involved parsing domain names left to right and right to left to see if
either version made sense.

Eventually, as the DNS grew, some domain names made sense in both
directions (stories that some in the DNS leadership team encouraged this
mayhem to persuade our friends in the UK to rethink their ordering reflect
joking comments at the time, but I don't think anyone did it intentionally)
and this led to changes such as those George describes.

Thanks!

Craig


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