[ih] Jon Postel's papers

[Craig Partridge]

On Sun, Jul 20, 2025 at 11:13 AM Eric Gade via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

>
> One question I had throughout my research was how influential the
> international community -- or at least the then prevalent assumption that
> some international community would subsume any Internet naming system down
> the road -- was on the structure and administration of the DNS from the
> beginning. There were some strong indications in the Feinler collection and
> elsewhere about this, but I think there's at least a chance more can be
> found in Postel's papers.
>
>
I may be able to add a little insight here. I was at the Jan 28-29, 1986
meeting Jake arranged at SRI that finalized the initial TLD (about 15 to 20
of us were there, representing the various email networks and NICs and DNS
software teams.  I was one of the two CSNET representatives, as well as
being an alpha tester of bind for Kevin Dunlap,  and was tasked by CSNET
with arranging to get .NET added to the initial list of TLDs.

The topic of DNS namespace compatibility with an internationally designed
namespace -- most notably OSI's namespace -- came up repeatedly during the
two days.  Jon made clear that he viewed this as a non-goal, to the point
that he was willing to make it hard to integrate the namespaces.  He
expressed the view that country codes were not terribly useful -- that
people would prefer to advertise themselves as corporations and educational
institutions, independent of their location.  And he observed that he had
already created a .US zone and purposefully handed out names in a way
incompatible with OSI's name plans.  (I seem to recall in a side discussion
[Jon sat next to me on one of the two days*] that Jon admitted that
creating .US was inconsistent with his position that country codes were not
useful, but that Bob Kahn had wanted a .US domain for CNRI -- but my memory
may be faulty).

Craig

PS: *You may wonder why I remember where I sat some 39 years later.
Because it was my first Internet standards/policy/technical meeting -- and
the first time I'd met Jon (and Paul Mockapetris, Jake, Ken Harrenstein,
Steve Kille, Mary Ann Horton, Ole Jacobson, and other folks I knew only as
names on emails).  I was very aware of getting to know people and of trying
to make a good impression.
-- 
*****
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