Discussion:
[ih] .UK vs .GB
John Levine
2018-04-13 22:12:58 UTC
Permalink
In another list someone was wondering why British domain names are
mostly in .UK even though the ISO 3166 code has always been .GB.

I know this came up before but can't find the discussion. Pointers or
rehash welcome. The first mention I can find of .UK is in an example
in RFC 821 in 1982, the first statement that ccTLDS would be ISO 3166
codes was in 1984.

For that matter, I see that JANET still runs .GB. What still uses it?

R's,
John
Nigel Roberts
2018-04-14 00:07:05 UTC
Permalink
Up to about 8 or 10 years ago there was a website on

http://www.dra.hmg.gb

But then the agency got split, and mostly privatised.

I think that was the last.
Post by John Levine
In another list someone was wondering why British domain names are
mostly in .UK even though the ISO 3166 code has always been .GB.
I know this came up before but can't find the discussion. Pointers or
rehash welcome. The first mention I can find of .UK is in an example
in RFC 821 in 1982, the first statement that ccTLDS would be ISO 3166
codes was in 1984.
For that matter, I see that JANET still runs .GB. What still uses it?
R's,
John
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Nigel Roberts
2018-04-14 00:08:53 UTC
Permalink
Well SOMETHING's still there

***@skylark:~$ dig dra.hmg.gb any

; <<>> DiG 9.10.3-P4-Ubuntu <<>> dra.hmg.gb any
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 24545
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 4, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 65494
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;dra.hmg.gb. IN ANY

;; ANSWER SECTION:
dra.hmg.gb. 21599 IN NS ns1.cs.ucl.ac.uk.
dra.hmg.gb. 21599 IN NS relay.mod.uk.
dra.hmg.gb. 21599 IN NS sun.mhs-relay.ac.uk.
dra.hmg.gb. 21599 IN SOA ns1.cs.ucl.ac.uk. hostmaster.cs.ucl.ac.uk.
200709271 14400 1800 3600000 360000

;; Query time: 101 msec
;; SERVER: 127.0.0.53#53(127.0.0.53)
;; WHEN: Sat Apr 14 01:08:07 BST 2018
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 168
Post by Nigel Roberts
Up to about 8 or 10 years ago there was a website on
http://www.dra.hmg.gb
But then the agency got split, and mostly privatised.
I think that was the last.
Post by John Levine
In another list someone was wondering why British domain names are
mostly in .UK even though the ISO 3166 code has always been .GB.
I know this came up before but can't find the discussion.  Pointers or
rehash welcome.  The first mention I can find of .UK is in an example
in RFC 821 in 1982, the first statement that ccTLDS would be ISO 3166
codes was in 1984.
For that matter, I see that JANET still runs .GB.  What still uses it?
R's,
John
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John Levine
2018-04-14 01:11:44 UTC
Permalink
Post by Nigel Roberts
Well SOMETHING's still there
dra.hmg.gb. 21599 IN NS ns1.cs.ucl.ac.uk.
dra.hmg.gb. 21599 IN NS relay.mod.uk.
dra.hmg.gb. 21599 IN NS sun.mhs-relay.ac.uk.
Hey, how about that:

dig @ns1.cs.ucl.ac.uk. dra.hmg.gb axfr

; <<>> DiG 9.8.3-P1 <<>> @ns1.cs.ucl.ac.uk. dra.hmg.gb axfr
; (1 server found)
;; global options: +cmd
dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN SOA ns1.cs.ucl.ac.uk. hostmaster.cs.ucl.ac.uk. 200709271 14400 1800 3600000 360000
dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN NS ns1.cs.ucl.ac.uk.
dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN NS relay.mod.uk.
dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN NS sun.mhs-relay.ac.uk.
hermes-mail.dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN MX 10 relay.dstl.gov.uk.
dfhnet.dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN MX 10 relay.dstl.gov.uk.
dfhnet.dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN A 146.80.9.10
delos.dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN A 146.80.9.105
hermes.dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN MX 10 relay.dstl.gov.uk.
hermes.dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN A 146.80.9.16
dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN SOA ns1.cs.ucl.ac.uk. hostmaster.cs.ucl.ac.uk.

I wonder what else is lurking nearby.

R's,
John
Alexander Goldman
2018-04-14 02:05:36 UTC
Permalink
The United Kingdom consists of the island of Great Britain + Northern
Ireland. Great Britain consists of England, Scotland, and Wales. The Union
Jack flag (of the United Kingdom) consists of three crosses: St. George for
England, St. Andrew for Scotland, and St. Patrick for Ireland
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_the_United_Kingdom.
Post by John Levine
Post by Nigel Roberts
Well SOMETHING's still there
dra.hmg.gb. 21599 IN NS ns1.cs.ucl.ac.uk.
dra.hmg.gb. 21599 IN NS relay.mod.uk.
dra.hmg.gb. 21599 IN NS sun.mhs-relay.ac.uk.
; (1 server found)
;; global options: +cmd
dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN SOA ns1.cs.ucl.ac.uk.
hostmaster.cs.ucl.ac.uk. 200709271 14400 1800 3600000 360000
dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN NS ns1.cs.ucl.ac.uk.
dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN NS relay.mod.uk.
dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN NS sun.mhs-relay.ac.uk.
hermes-mail.dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN MX 10 relay.dstl.gov.uk.
dfhnet.dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN MX 10 relay.dstl.gov.uk.
dfhnet.dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN A 146.80.9.10
delos.dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN A 146.80.9.105
hermes.dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN MX 10 relay.dstl.gov.uk.
hermes.dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN A 146.80.9.16
dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN SOA ns1.cs.ucl.ac.uk.
hostmaster.cs.ucl.ac.uk.
I wonder what else is lurking nearby.
R's,
John
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Patrik Fältström
2018-04-14 05:34:29 UTC
Permalink
Although I think there are some questions there, like if Wales is a separate "country" like Scotland. I thought Wales and England was sort of one entity.



paf
The United Kingdom consists of the island of Great Britain + Northern Ireland. Great Britain consists of England, Scotland, and Wales. The Union Jack flag (of the United Kingdom) consists of three crosses: St. George for England, St. Andrew for Scotland, and St. Patrick for Ireland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_the_United_Kingdom.
Post by John Levine
Post by Nigel Roberts
Well SOMETHING's still there
dra.hmg.gb. 21599 IN NS ns1.cs.ucl.ac.uk.
dra.hmg.gb. 21599 IN NS relay.mod.uk.
dra.hmg.gb. 21599 IN NS sun.mhs-relay.ac.uk.
; (1 server found)
;; global options: +cmd
dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN SOA ns1.cs.ucl.ac.uk.
hostmaster.cs.ucl.ac.uk. 200709271 14400 1800 3600000 360000
dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN NS ns1.cs.ucl.ac.uk.
dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN NS relay.mod.uk.
dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN NS sun.mhs-relay.ac.uk.
hermes-mail.dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN MX 10 relay.dstl.gov.uk.
dfhnet.dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN MX 10 relay.dstl.gov.uk.
dfhnet.dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN A 146.80.9.10
delos.dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN A 146.80.9.105
hermes.dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN MX 10 relay.dstl.gov.uk.
hermes.dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN A 146.80.9.16
dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN SOA ns1.cs.ucl.ac.uk.
hostmaster.cs.ucl.ac.uk.
I wonder what else is lurking nearby.
R's,
John
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Brian E Carpenter
2018-04-14 07:13:17 UTC
Permalink
Post by Patrik Fältström
Although I think there are some questions there, like if Wales is a separate "country" like Scotland. I thought Wales and England was sort of one entity.
Try saying that in a pub in Wales and see what happens to you :-).

Wales, like Scotland, has its own Parliament, although the Scottish Parliament
has more powers. Mostly, English law applies in Wales, but the Scottish
legal system is different. However, some Welsh people still resent the events
of 1282-1301 when the English king imposed his rule on Wales, only 700 years ago.

In the Commonwealth Games (taking place now in Australia), England, Wales,
Scotland and Northern Island compete as separate countries: visit
https://thecgf.com/countries to see the flags. In the Olympic games,
the UK competes as one country (coded GBR).

The Northern Irish border (between .uk and .ie) is the biggest unsolved
issue in Brexit. Another reason why .uk vs .gb is a political question
even today.

Postel was a wise man. If he'd insisted on .gb, I think there would have
been serious trouble at some point.

Brian
Post by Patrik Fältström
http://youtu.be/rNu8XDBSn10
paf
The United Kingdom consists of the island of Great Britain + Northern Ireland. Great Britain consists of England, Scotland, and Wales. The Union Jack flag (of the United Kingdom) consists of three crosses: St. George for England, St. Andrew for Scotland, and St. Patrick for Ireland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_the_United_Kingdom.
Post by John Levine
Post by Nigel Roberts
Well SOMETHING's still there
dra.hmg.gb. 21599 IN NS ns1.cs.ucl.ac.uk.
dra.hmg.gb. 21599 IN NS relay.mod.uk.
dra.hmg.gb. 21599 IN NS sun.mhs-relay.ac.uk.
; (1 server found)
;; global options: +cmd
dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN SOA ns1.cs.ucl.ac.uk.
hostmaster.cs.ucl.ac.uk. 200709271 14400 1800 3600000 360000
dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN NS ns1.cs.ucl.ac.uk.
dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN NS relay.mod.uk.
dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN NS sun.mhs-relay.ac.uk.
hermes-mail.dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN MX 10 relay.dstl.gov.uk.
dfhnet.dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN MX 10 relay.dstl.gov.uk.
dfhnet.dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN A 146.80.9.10
delos.dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN A 146.80.9.105
hermes.dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN MX 10 relay.dstl.gov.uk.
hermes.dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN A 146.80.9.16
dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN SOA ns1.cs.ucl.ac.uk.
hostmaster.cs.ucl.ac.uk.
I wonder what else is lurking nearby.
R's,
John
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Nigel Roberts
2018-04-14 08:42:54 UTC
Permalink
The choice of GB in the ISO code was, almost certainly, for this reason.
There would have been much more potential for trouble if the ISO code
had been UK.

More to follow . . .
Postel was a wise man. If he'd insisted on .gb, I think there would have
been serious trouble at some point.
Brian
Post by Patrik Fältström
http://youtu.be/rNu8XDBSn10
paf
The United Kingdom consists of the island of Great Britain + Northern Ireland. Great Britain consists of England, Scotland, and Wales. The Union Jack flag (of the United Kingdom) consists of three crosses: St. George for England, St. Andrew for Scotland, and St. Patrick for Ireland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_the_United_Kingdom.
Post by John Levine
Post by Nigel Roberts
Well SOMETHING's still there
dra.hmg.gb. 21599 IN NS ns1.cs.ucl.ac.uk.
dra.hmg.gb. 21599 IN NS relay.mod.uk.
dra.hmg.gb. 21599 IN NS sun.mhs-relay.ac.uk.
; (1 server found)
;; global options: +cmd
dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN SOA ns1.cs.ucl.ac.uk.
hostmaster.cs.ucl.ac.uk. 200709271 14400 1800 3600000 360000
dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN NS ns1.cs.ucl.ac.uk.
dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN NS relay.mod.uk.
dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN NS sun.mhs-relay.ac.uk.
hermes-mail.dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN MX 10 relay.dstl.gov.uk.
dfhnet.dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN MX 10 relay.dstl.gov.uk.
dfhnet.dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN A 146.80.9.10
delos.dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN A 146.80.9.105
hermes.dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN MX 10 relay.dstl.gov.uk.
hermes.dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN A 146.80.9.16
dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN SOA ns1.cs.ucl.ac.uk.
hostmaster.cs.ucl.ac.uk.
I wonder what else is lurking nearby.
R's,
John
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Brian E Carpenter
2018-04-14 20:07:56 UTC
Permalink
Post by Nigel Roberts
The choice of GB in the ISO code was, almost certainly, for this reason.
Not sure who you were quoting there, but it wasn't me.
Post by Nigel Roberts
There would have been much more potential for trouble if the ISO code
had been UK.
It's possible, but I doubt if anyone really cared in the 1970s. The world
didn't really notice these codes at all until they started showing up
in email addresses and URLs. And the strength of feeling was on both sides
in Northern Ireland, so either choice was wrong.
Post by Nigel Roberts
More to follow . . .
Yes, and thanks for all those details.

Brian
Post by Nigel Roberts
Postel was a wise man. If he'd insisted on .gb, I think there would have
been serious trouble at some point.
Brian
Post by Patrik Fältström
http://youtu.be/rNu8XDBSn10
paf
The United Kingdom consists of the island of Great Britain + Northern Ireland. Great Britain consists of England, Scotland, and Wales. The Union Jack flag (of the United Kingdom) consists of three crosses: St. George for England, St. Andrew for Scotland, and St. Patrick for Ireland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_the_United_Kingdom.
Post by John Levine
Post by Nigel Roberts
Well SOMETHING's still there
dra.hmg.gb. 21599 IN NS ns1.cs.ucl.ac.uk.
dra.hmg.gb. 21599 IN NS relay.mod.uk.
dra.hmg.gb. 21599 IN NS sun.mhs-relay.ac.uk.
; (1 server found)
;; global options: +cmd
dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN SOA ns1.cs.ucl.ac.uk.
hostmaster.cs.ucl.ac.uk. 200709271 14400 1800 3600000 360000
dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN NS ns1.cs.ucl.ac.uk.
dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN NS relay.mod.uk.
dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN NS sun.mhs-relay.ac.uk.
hermes-mail.dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN MX 10 relay.dstl.gov.uk.
dfhnet.dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN MX 10 relay.dstl.gov.uk.
dfhnet.dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN A 146.80.9.10
delos.dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN A 146.80.9.105
hermes.dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN MX 10 relay.dstl.gov.uk.
hermes.dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN A 146.80.9.16
dra.hmg.gb. 360000 IN SOA ns1.cs.ucl.ac.uk.
hostmaster.cs.ucl.ac.uk.
I wonder what else is lurking nearby.
R's,
John
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Nigel Roberts
2018-04-14 20:27:06 UTC
Permalink
Post by Brian E Carpenter
The choice of GB in the ISO code was, almost certainly, for this reason.
Not sure who you were quoting there, but it wasn't me.
No, it wasn't. Those are my words. Not sure how they end up appearing to
be quoted.
Nigel Roberts
2018-04-14 09:14:07 UTC
Permalink
Actually, on re-reading this sentence and recalling the news last week,
I appear to have unintentionally taken an overly Anglocentric view of
this bit.

This should read "was only confirmed on its current borders in 1998".
1801. It lasted until 1922. So today's UK (which is the legal
successor-state in international law), is less than 100 years old, and
was only confirmed on its current borders in 1948-49.
John Day
2018-04-14 13:24:38 UTC
Permalink
Don’t forget the Baliwicks of Guernsey and Jersey. ;-)

Who are quite proud of the fact that have been part of Britain, longer than England has. ;-)
The United Kingdom consists of the island of Great Britain + Northern Ireland. Great Britain consists of England, Scotland, and Wales. The Union Jack flag (of the United Kingdom) consists of three crosses: St. George for England, St. Andrew for Scotland, and St. Patrick for Ireland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_the_United_Kingdom <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_the_United_Kingdom>.
Post by Nigel Roberts
Well SOMETHING's still there
dra.hmg.gb <http://dra.hmg.gb/>. 21599 IN NS ns1.cs.ucl.ac.uk <http://ns1.cs.ucl.ac.uk/>.
dra.hmg.gb <http://dra.hmg.gb/>. 21599 IN NS relay.mod.uk <http://relay.mod.uk/>.
dra.hmg.gb <http://dra.hmg.gb/>. 21599 IN NS sun.mhs-relay.ac.uk <http://sun.mhs-relay.ac.uk/>.
; (1 server found)
;; global options: +cmd
dra.hmg.gb <http://dra.hmg.gb/>. 360000 IN SOA ns1.cs.ucl.ac.uk <http://ns1.cs.ucl.ac.uk/>. hostmaster.cs.ucl.ac.uk <http://hostmaster.cs.ucl.ac.uk/>. 200709271 14400 1800 3600000 360000
dra.hmg.gb <http://dra.hmg.gb/>. 360000 IN NS ns1.cs.ucl.ac.uk <http://ns1.cs.ucl.ac.uk/>.
dra.hmg.gb <http://dra.hmg.gb/>. 360000 IN NS relay.mod.uk <http://relay.mod.uk/>.
dra.hmg.gb <http://dra.hmg.gb/>. 360000 IN NS sun.mhs-relay.ac.uk <http://sun.mhs-relay.ac.uk/>.
hermes-mail.dra.hmg.gb <http://hermes-mail.dra.hmg.gb/>. 360000 IN MX 10 relay.dstl.gov.uk <http://relay.dstl.gov.uk/>.
dfhnet.dra.hmg.gb <http://dfhnet.dra.hmg.gb/>. 360000 IN MX 10 relay.dstl.gov.uk <http://relay.dstl.gov.uk/>.
dfhnet.dra.hmg.gb <http://dfhnet.dra.hmg.gb/>. 360000 IN A 146.80.9.10
delos.dra.hmg.gb <http://delos.dra.hmg.gb/>. 360000 IN A 146.80.9.105
hermes.dra.hmg.gb <http://hermes.dra.hmg.gb/>. 360000 IN MX 10 relay.dstl.gov.uk <http://relay.dstl.gov.uk/>.
hermes.dra.hmg.gb <http://hermes.dra.hmg.gb/>. 360000 IN A 146.80.9.16
dra.hmg.gb <http://dra.hmg.gb/>. 360000 IN SOA ns1.cs.ucl.ac.uk <http://ns1.cs.ucl.ac.uk/>. hostmaster.cs.ucl.ac.uk <http://hostmaster.cs.ucl.ac.uk/>.
I wonder what else is lurking nearby.
R's,
John
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Dr Eberhard W Lisse
2018-04-14 15:03:32 UTC
Permalink
I am quite sure, Nigel will not :-)-O

el
Don’t forget the Baliwicks of Guernsey and Jersey. ;-)
Who are quite proud of the fact that have been part of Britain, longer
than England has. ;-)
[...]
John R. Levine
2018-04-14 16:32:46 UTC
Permalink
Post by John Day
Don’t forget the Baliwicks of Guernsey and Jersey. ;-)
Who are quite proud of the fact that have been part of Britain, longer than England has. ;-)
Yes, and you get to sell overpriced .JE and .GG domain names, too.

I've been meaning to go to Jersey and visit my money (not very much) but
haven't had a chance yet.

Regards,
John Levine, ***@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly
Nigel Roberts
2018-04-14 19:04:13 UTC
Permalink
That was John Day who wrote that, not me.


Nigel

(PS: Our wholesale prices are reasonably comparable with other small
registries and positively tiny compared to some new gTLDs, but that's
not exactly history-related)
Post by John R. Levine
Don’t forget the Baliwicks of Guernsey and Jersey.  ;-)
Who are quite proud of the fact that have been part of Britain, longer
than England has. ;-)
Yes, and you get to sell overpriced .JE and .GG domain names, too.
I've been meaning to go to Jersey and visit my money (not very much) but
haven't had a chance yet.
Regards,
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly
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Jeremy C. Reed
2018-04-14 19:02:06 UTC
Permalink
Post by John Levine
I wonder what else is lurking nearby.
I didn't find anything in FSI's historical dnsdb for owner
(left-hand-side) beyond those few. Plus I saw this TXT record which has
been there for at least 7 years:

gb. TXT "Domain names for United Kingdom go under .uk"
gb. TXT "For details see the web page on: www.nic.uk"
gb. TXT "This domain is frozen and will be phased out"

I did see over 1500 uses of gb in rdata for PTR, NS, MX, etc. (but only
17 for last month). I guess they are just unmaintained PTR records,
temporary abuse (like non-GB labels with maybe some messages encoded in
the label and also in the rdata that is in GB, or mistakes. I don't see
any recent valid use.

105 CNAME
10 DNAME
1380 MX
16 NS
77 PTR
2 SOA
Tony Finch
2018-04-16 11:21:44 UTC
Permalink
My favourite .gb site used to be ftp.dra.hmg.uk (I think even in the
1990s it was approximately the only site in .gb) from which DRA Malvern
(formerly RSRE) distributed their compilers - the ELLA harware description
package which included Algol 68RS, and the TenDRA retargetable C compiler.

Tony.
--
f.anthony.n.finch <***@dotat.at> http://dotat.at/
Malin, Hebrides, Bailey: Southeast, veering south later, 7 to severe gale 9.
Rough or very rough, occasionally high later. Occasional rain, showers later.
Good, occasionally poor.
Patrik Fältström
2018-04-14 02:01:39 UTC
Permalink
In another list someone was wondering why British domain names are mostly in .UK even though the ISO 3166 code has always been .GB.
I know this came up before but can't find the discussion. Pointers or rehash welcome. The first mention I can find of .UK is in an example in RFC 821 in 1982, the first statement that ccTLDS would be ISO 3166 codes was in 1984.
The only explanation I got orally was that "GB stands for Great Britain, while UK stands for United Kingdom of Great Britain and the Northern Ireland".

That was enough for me. Don't even remember who explained it, but it was around the famous entry of .CS into the root zone that created the "interesting" situation with CS.BERKELEY.EDU (and others) and massive weird extra hacking in sendmail.cf due to the Janet "reverse" order of labels in a domain name.

But, I might also have constructed this story in my head... :-)

paf
Eric Gade
2018-04-14 02:24:03 UTC
Permalink
The NIC collection at CHM has info about this. The draft RFCs where Postel
first proposed TLDs (between Jan and May 85 I believe) all proposed UK as
examples. Discussion on the "Namedroppers" list at the time made it pretty
clear why: the UCL nodes used the NRS (Name Recocognition Scheme) and
already had UK at the top level (though reversed)
Post by John Levine
Post by John Levine
In another list someone was wondering why British domain names are
mostly in .UK even though the ISO 3166 code has always been .GB.
Post by John Levine
I know this came up before but can't find the discussion. Pointers or
rehash welcome. The first mention I can find of .UK is in an example in
RFC 821 in 1982, the first statement that ccTLDS would be ISO 3166 codes
was in 1984.
The only explanation I got orally was that "GB stands for Great Britain,
while UK stands for United Kingdom of Great Britain and the Northern
Ireland".
That was enough for me. Don't even remember who explained it, but it was
around the famous entry of .CS into the root zone that created the
"interesting" situation with CS.BERKELEY.EDU (and others) and massive
weird extra hacking in sendmail.cf due to the Janet "reverse" order of
labels in a domain name.
But, I might also have constructed this story in my head... :-)
paf
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Eric Gade
2018-04-14 02:44:13 UTC
Permalink
Sorry one more message about this, as I've dug up an old copy of my
dissertation (which in part addresses this issue). In 1984 when the DNS RFC
was being drafted (I was mistaken it was the summer of 1984 not 1985), the
proposal to use the ISO-3166 list for ccTLDs came pretty late in the game.
There are limited records of discussions about this outside of draft RFCs
kept by Feinler and emails that appear on the Namedroppers list.

As I said previously, they were already using .UK as their top-level in the
NRS hierarchy in the UK. The document record shows that even as the DNS
went into use, there was a lot of pressure for the Joint Network Team to
revise how they structured their names, not just because of the UK/GB
issue, but also because of the reversal of the names (hence the 1990 fiasco
of adding Czech). The JNT had very clear reasons for not making the
changes: they did not think the DNS would be the world standard, and had
invested both time and money in making ISO standards a reality. They did
not want to spend the money or time on making such changes to the NRS just
for DNS purposes, when they believed a new international standard was
inevitable and would require yet more changes. The X.400/X.500 systems were
simply going to replace everything anyway, so the wisdom went.
Post by Eric Gade
The NIC collection at CHM has info about this. The draft RFCs where Postel
first proposed TLDs (between Jan and May 85 I believe) all proposed UK as
examples. Discussion on the "Namedroppers" list at the time made it pretty
clear why: the UCL nodes used the NRS (Name Recocognition Scheme) and
already had UK at the top level (though reversed)
Post by John Levine
Post by John Levine
In another list someone was wondering why British domain names are
mostly in .UK even though the ISO 3166 code has always been .GB.
Post by John Levine
I know this came up before but can't find the discussion. Pointers or
rehash welcome. The first mention I can find of .UK is in an example in
RFC 821 in 1982, the first statement that ccTLDS would be ISO 3166 codes
was in 1984.
The only explanation I got orally was that "GB stands for Great Britain,
while UK stands for United Kingdom of Great Britain and the Northern
Ireland".
That was enough for me. Don't even remember who explained it, but it was
around the famous entry of .CS into the root zone that created the
"interesting" situation with CS.BERKELEY.EDU (and others) and massive
weird extra hacking in sendmail.cf due to the Janet "reverse" order of
labels in a domain name.
But, I might also have constructed this story in my head... :-)
paf
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Patrik Fältström
2018-04-14 04:00:31 UTC
Permalink
The X.400/X.500 systems were simply going to replace everything anyway, so the wisdom went.
😳

But of course!!

Patrik
Brian E Carpenter
2018-04-14 04:57:34 UTC
Permalink
Post by Patrik Fältström
The X.400/X.500 systems were simply going to replace everything anyway, so the wisdom went.
😳
But of course!!
Why on earth we didn't all switch to X.400 is hard to imagine. For example,
the X.400 human-readable version of a JANET address via a gateway would have
been so simple:
C = gb; ADMD = gold 400; PRMD = gw; DD.jnt-mail = user(a)domain.subdomains

(Quoted from Recommendation for a shorthand X.400 address representation, 1989.)

Brian
Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond
2018-04-15 00:18:17 UTC
Permalink
Post by Brian E Carpenter
Post by Patrik Fältström
The X.400/X.500 systems were simply going to replace everything anyway, so the wisdom went.
😳
But of course!!
Why on earth we didn't all switch to X.400 is hard to imagine. For example,
the X.400 human-readable version of a JANET address via a gateway would have
C = gb; ADMD = gold 400; PRMD = gw; DD.jnt-mail = user(a)domain.subdomains
(Quoted from Recommendation for a shorthand X.400 address representation, 1989.)
I know we're all laughing about this now, but back then it was no
laughing matter. JANET was running no CCITT W series recommendations and
the policy Europe-wide was to promote X.25 and of course move to X.400
So all the way until the early nineties (1992?) we were told that the
way forward was to get our house systems in order to send/receive X.400
emails. And it was clear that the number of hoops to jump through to get
that darn X.400 working was beyond human. When sending through gateways,
one had to add/delete further complicated fields like O and OU, as well
as I & S or G, but most importantly, replace the ; with / and on systems
which did not accept /, use \/ or perhaps encapsulate on " " or \" or
\// especially if where were spaces or, God forbit, <LF> that might have
been added to the system because the email address wrapped around the
screen. One error and your email would bounce with something as helpful
as two words: "Unrecognized ORname", because for many gateways it
appeared to be the default error.
I remember signing a petition that ultimately went to JNT, asking to
keep NRS (if we were to stick to X.25), migrate to DNS (migration to
TCP-IP), but to avoid X.400 at all costs. To this day, I still cannot
believe some people were serious when they proposed the X.400 addressing
scheme... and that some people took the format seriously.
Kindest regards,

Olivier
Brian E Carpenter
2018-04-15 04:36:43 UTC
Permalink
below...
Post by Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond
Post by Brian E Carpenter
Post by Patrik Fältström
The X.400/X.500 systems were simply going to replace everything anyway, so the wisdom went.
😳
But of course!!
Why on earth we didn't all switch to X.400 is hard to imagine. For example,
the X.400 human-readable version of a JANET address via a gateway would have
C = gb; ADMD = gold 400; PRMD = gw; DD.jnt-mail = user(a)domain.subdomains
(Quoted from Recommendation for a shorthand X.400 address representation, 1989.)
I know we're all laughing about this now, but back then it was no
laughing matter. JANET was running no CCITT W series recommendations and
the policy Europe-wide was to promote X.25 and of course move to X.400
So all the way until the early nineties (1992?) we were told that the
way forward was to get our house systems in order to send/receive X.400
emails. And it was clear that the number of hoops to jump through to get
that darn X.400 working was beyond human. When sending through gateways,
one had to add/delete further complicated fields like O and OU, as well
as I & S or G, but most importantly, replace the ; with / and on systems
which did not accept /, use \/ or perhaps encapsulate on " " or \" or
\// especially if where were spaces or, God forbit, <LF> that might have
been added to the system because the email address wrapped around the
screen. One error and your email would bounce with something as helpful
as two words: "Unrecognized ORname", because for many gateways it
appeared to be the default error.
I remember signing a petition that ultimately went to JNT, asking to
keep NRS (if we were to stick to X.25), migrate to DNS (migration to
TCP-IP), but to avoid X.400 at all costs. To this day, I still cannot
believe some people were serious when they proposed the X.400 addressing
scheme... and that some people took the format seriously.
The document I quoted was written in all seriousness, because although
the assumption was that the UI would normally hide all details of X.400
addresses, there was a question on everybody's tongue: "What should I
put on my business card?" And indeed it was submitted as
ISO/IEC JTC1/SC18/WG4/N102 (by Denise Heagerty at CERN and Ruediger
Grimm at GMD Darmstadt).

I think I did once see a business card with an X.400 address (but
certainly not from Denise or Ruediger, who had more sense.)

X.400 addressing is a great example of design by committee, in which
consensus was reached by including everything suggested by anybody.
There were apparently 14 different keywords.

Bian
Patrik Fältström
2018-04-15 09:48:26 UTC
Permalink
Post by Brian E Carpenter
I think I did once see a business card with an X.400 address (but
certainly not from Denise or Ruediger, who had more sense.)
In Sweden X.400 was used by a few hardcore institutions. It required Y2K problems to have Tele2/Swipnet turn off their admd and gateway to/from smtp.

Patrik
Nigel Roberts
2018-04-15 11:44:51 UTC
Permalink
Not long after Laurie Brown and I set up GG we were 'invited' to a
meeting in St Peter Port to talk with the IT folks from the Guernsey and
Jersey Governments, which I went to.

I remember that Peter Harris' (who later became the Island's Data
Protection Commissioner) business card had an X.400 address on it quite
prominently.

I'd previously worked at DEC for the Office Systems people (IOSG) who
were responsible for ALL-IN-1 and Message Router-X.400 Gateway (MRX) so
I knew about X.400 mail. Even so, I *never* understood how anyone could
possible want to use X.400 email -- I'd been emailing with people on the
Internet using simple VAXmail almost since forever, using the form
DECWRL::"***@domain.tld" See RISKS-DIGEST, SF-LOVERS, etc, _passim_.
(https://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/7/93#subj6 for example).

As I remember things, Peter also haa a "normal looking" email address
@guernsey.gov.uk in addition to the 'official' X.400 address, which,
IIRC, he happily explained was connected to the upstream through some
dialup system (this was mid-1996), possbly

Not long after they decided to adopt gov.gg in parallel, and that
evenutally became the 'brand'. (I don't even think guernsey.gov.uk is
delegated any more).


N.
Post by Patrik Fältström
Post by Brian E Carpenter
I think I did once see a business card with an X.400 address (but
certainly not from Denise or Ruediger, who had more sense.)
In Sweden X.400 was used by a few hardcore institutions. It required Y2K problems to have Tele2/Swipnet turn off their admd and gateway to/from smtp.
Patrik
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John Klensin
2018-04-15 16:20:20 UTC
Permalink
I certainly didn't mean to claim that X.500 would have been a good
substitute for the DNS. Independent of its considerable range of
technical and design issues, in the early 1980s it had already entered
the "ready a couple of years from now" state that continued for more
than a decade so it was really not a plausible option. However, those
considerations did not prevent its being recommended (and even
aggressively pushed) in various quarters.

john
Post by Patrik Fältström
Post by Brian E Carpenter
I think I did once see a business card with an X.400 address (but
certainly not from Denise or Ruediger, who had more sense.)
In Sweden X.400 was used by a few hardcore institutions. It required Y2K problems to have Tele2/Swipnet turn off their admd and gateway to/from smtp.
Patrik
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John Day
2018-04-15 17:59:43 UTC
Permalink
O, I would definitely agree. As I said, X.500 bit off quite a bit more than they should have or what was needed, but DNS bit off too little and just automated the host file.
Post by John Klensin
I certainly didn't mean to claim that X.500 would have been a good
substitute for the DNS. Independent of its considerable range of
technical and design issues, in the early 1980s it had already entered
the "ready a couple of years from now" state that continued for more
than a decade so it was really not a plausible option. However, those
considerations did not prevent its being recommended (and even
aggressively pushed) in various quarters.
john
Post by Patrik Fältström
Post by Brian E Carpenter
I think I did once see a business card with an X.400 address (but
certainly not from Denise or Ruediger, who had more sense.)
In Sweden X.400 was used by a few hardcore institutions. It required Y2K problems to have Tele2/Swipnet turn off their admd and gateway to/from smtp.
Patrik
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John Day
2018-04-15 13:01:36 UTC
Permalink
Yes, it was a committee as was SMTP. But before you get to self-satisfied with how smart we all were and they weren’t. It should be pointed out that much of the design of both X.400 and X.500 was driven by the former DARPA participants in the National Software Works project from SRI. I had many an argument with them over various aspects of it.

The idea of knowing what type the components of an identifier are is not inherently a bad idea. It certainly gives you more information for the database design that goes with it.

John
Post by Brian E Carpenter
X.400 addressing is a great example of design by committee, in which
consensus was reached by including everything suggested by anybody.
There were apparently 14 different keywords.
Bian
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Dr Eberhard W Lisse
2018-04-15 13:43:55 UTC
Permalink
I personally found that X.400 addressing was better than a UUCP bang
path, but of course in the words of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.400

"As with most ISO standards dealing with application-level
networking, X.400 failed to compete successfully with SMTP, the
Internet-based equivalent in North America."

Remember, until the early 90's even German Universities were not
connected to the ARPANET.

At the Technical University in Aachen we used BITNET/EARN (on VAXen and
CDCs, at the nearby Nuclear Research Facility in Jülich the used IBMs,
in Dortmund on BSD). CSNET was used a little in Southwest Germany.
Intercommunication was reliable, but difficult.

So something needed to be done.

I recall the the guys from the Computer Center telling me before I
graduated from Medical School in 1987 that X.400 and OSI would be all
the rage, Real Soon Now, and when I saw them again on leave from Namibia
in 1992 (where we had been using UUCP/uuPC for a year or two) they were
deeply engaged with TCP/IP.

greetings, el
Yes, it was a committee as was SMTP. But before you get to
self-satisfied with how smart we all were and they weren’t. It should
be pointed out that much of the design of both X.400 and X.500 was
driven by the former DARPA participants in the National Software Works
project from SRI. I had many an argument with them over various
aspects of it.
The idea of knowing what type the components of an identifier are is
not inherently a bad idea. It certainly gives you more information for
the database design that goes with it.
John
[...]
--
Dr. Eberhard W. Lisse / Obstetrician & Gynaecologist (Saar)
***@lisse.NA / * | Telephone: +264 81 124 6733 (cell)
PO Box 8421 /
Bachbrecht, Namibia ;____/
Patrik Fältström
2018-04-15 14:10:23 UTC
Permalink
Post by John Day
The idea of knowing what type the components of an identifier are is not inherently a bad idea. It certainly gives you more information for the database design that goes with it.
Agree, but in the case of X.400 and X.500 there was from my perspective a layer violation where there was not a distinction between the email address and the name. Although the same mistake is often implemented as a convention in smtp as well when people have ***@domain construction in their email address. :-(

Patrik
John Day
2018-04-15 14:43:11 UTC
Permalink
Actually, the layer violation in X.500 was that it tried to be DNS and Google. We knew this at the time, but between the X.500 faction that had delusions of grandeur and the PTT faction who saw it as both White Pages and Yellow Pages (and a major source of revenue), there was little chance for injecting sanity into the process. At least we were able to get them to drop descriptive names in favor of distinguished names and we sent one person who knew something to try to help them.

Of course, the Internet screwed up DNS by making it a macro-resolver for IP addresses rather than a directory and making it something the application had to deal with. When actually it is part of the Transport Layer. It is the Transport Layer’s job to map application names to network addresses. Whether or not you want applications to be able to see addresses may be open for discussion, but they shouldn’t *have* to see them.

This is something the first Unix system on the Net (1975) got right. They hacked file_io and extended the file system, so that the syntax was “<file desc> = open(<host name>/<application-name>)” That would have been a much better direction for the future than sockets.

Also, both X.400 and X.500 groups were none too bright. They thought that defining the syntax of a protocol was a formal description of the protocol. (!) There was no need to define the action to be taken, it was obvious from the syntax.

I remember a meeting in the burbs of Virginia where we took them to task over this. Jim White (of SRI and the ARPANET) kept insisting that the semantics of the attributes were well-defined by the names of the attributes until we pointed out 4 or 5 different interpretations for most of the names. I finally pointed out that according to their spec, I could put the value “Z” in every attribute and it would be perfectly fine.

No, OSI didn’t have a corner on being dense. It had its share, but so did everyone else. They had to put up with the Brits! ;-)

Take care,
John
Post by Patrik Fältström
Post by John Day
The idea of knowing what type the components of an identifier are is not inherently a bad idea. It certainly gives you more information for the database design that goes with it.
Patrik
Paul Vixie
2018-04-15 16:36:19 UTC
Permalink
Post by John Day
...
Of course, the Internet screwed up DNS by making it a macro-resolver
for IP addresses rather than a directory and making it something the
application had to deal with. ...
the design had many flaws, but remains the best example of "the art of
the possible" i have seen in my short lifetime. it was good enough, and
that's why it beat out every alternative which might have been the best.
Post by John Day
This is something the first Unix system on the Net (1975) got right.
They hacked file_io and extended the file system, so that the syntax
was “<file desc> = open(<host name>/<application-name>)” That would
have been a much better direction for the future than sockets.
maybe. that approach later came to pass in linux, in devfs. i am not
sure i would have wanted to try for it in a 16-bit address space though.
--
P Vixie
John Day
2018-04-15 17:56:32 UTC
Permalink
Worked fine at the time. And was independent of whether one did DNS or some sort of directory.
Post by John Day
...
Of course, the Internet screwed up DNS by making it a macro-resolver
for IP addresses rather than a directory and making it something the
application had to deal with. ...
the design had many flaws, but remains the best example of "the art of the possible" i have seen in my short lifetime. it was good enough, and that's why it beat out every alternative which might have been the best.
Post by John Day
This is something the first Unix system on the Net (1975) got right.
They hacked file_io and extended the file system, so that the syntax
was “<file desc> = open(<host name>/<application-name>)” That would
have been a much better direction for the future than sockets.
maybe. that approach later came to pass in linux, in devfs. i am not sure i would have wanted to try for it in a 16-bit address space though.
--
P Vixie
Craig Partridge
2018-04-15 14:58:22 UTC
Permalink
Post by John Day
Yes, it was a committee as was SMTP. But before you get to self-satisfied
with how smart we all were and they weren’t. It should be pointed out that
much of the design of both X.400 and X.500 was driven by the former DARPA
participants in the National Software Works project from SRI. I had many an
argument with them over various aspects of it.
A historical nit (but isn't that what this list is about? :-)). SMTP, as
best I could determine when I did research on the history of email was
*not* a committee product but rather something Jon Postel wrote in response
to criticism (as best I could determine, from Peter Kirstein) of MTP.

Whereas RFC 733/822 message and address formats were committee products
(and given we were discussion addresses, seems to better fit John's
comment).

Craig
John Day
2018-04-15 15:06:15 UTC
Permalink
I guess that is right. I stand corrected. No one else has had any input into SMTP since 822. Oops.
Yes, it was a committee as was SMTP. But before you get to self-satisfied with how smart we all were and they weren’t. It should be pointed out that much of the design of both X.400 and X.500 was driven by the former DARPA participants in the National Software Works project from SRI. I had many an argument with them over various aspects of it.
A historical nit (but isn't that what this list is about? :-)). SMTP, as best I could determine when I did research on the history of email was *not* a committee product but rather something Jon Postel wrote in response to criticism (as best I could determine, from Peter Kirstein) of MTP.
Whereas RFC 733/822 message and address formats were committee products (and given we were discussion addresses, seems to better fit John's comment).
Craig
John Klensin
2018-04-15 16:25:33 UTC
Permalink
Post by John Day
I guess that is right. I stand corrected. No one else has had any input into
SMTP since 822. Oops.
Huh? Is that really what you meant? If so, neither I nor the
millions of people, including all of those on this list, who are using
the WG-developed SMTP extension model, etc., have any idea what you
are talking about.

john
Brian E Carpenter
2018-04-16 04:57:26 UTC
Permalink
Post by John Day
Yes, it was a committee as was SMTP. But before you get to self-satisfied with how smart we all were and they weren’t. It should be pointed out that much of the design of both X.400 and X.500 was driven by the former DARPA participants in the National Software Works project from SRI. I had many an argument with them over various aspects of it.
The idea of knowing what type the components of an identifier are is not inherently a bad idea. It certainly gives you more information for the database design that goes with it.
Yes, the list of X.400 keywords strongly suggests database design rather than human interface design. But even so, it's a kitchen sink list.

Brian
Post by John Day
John
Post by Brian E Carpenter
X.400 addressing is a great example of design by committee, in which
consensus was reached by including everything suggested by anybody.
There were apparently 14 different keywords.
Bian
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.
John Day
2018-04-16 09:37:18 UTC
Permalink
The list of possibilities for X.400 is less than the possibilities for current email. The only difference is they designate the type of the attribute and the current email doesn’t. ;-) So should we conclude that while X.400 included the kitchen sink, the current mail included the bathtub? ;-)

John
Post by Brian E Carpenter
Post by John Day
Yes, it was a committee as was SMTP. But before you get to self-satisfied with how smart we all were and they weren’t. It should be pointed out that much of the design of both X.400 and X.500 was driven by the former DARPA participants in the National Software Works project from SRI. I had many an argument with them over various aspects of it.
The idea of knowing what type the components of an identifier are is not inherently a bad idea. It certainly gives you more information for the database design that goes with it.
Yes, the list of X.400 keywords strongly suggests database design rather than human interface design. But even so, it's a kitchen sink list.
Brian
Post by John Day
John
Post by Brian E Carpenter
X.400 addressing is a great example of design by committee, in which
consensus was reached by including everything suggested by anybody.
There were apparently 14 different keywords.
Bian
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.
Johan Helsingius
2018-04-18 10:34:20 UTC
Permalink
Post by Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond
I know we're all laughing about this now, but back then it was no
laughing matter. JANET was running no CCITT W series recommendations and
the policy Europe-wide was to promote X.25 and of course move to X.400
So all the way until the early nineties (1992?) we were told that the
way forward was to get our house systems in order to send/receive X.400
emails.
I am pretty sure Daniel Karrenberg still has a copy of the EUnet X.400
transition plan that he wrote, fully well knowing it would never be
used...

Julf
Brian E Carpenter
2018-04-14 04:40:50 UTC
Permalink
Post by Eric Gade
Sorry one more message about this, as I've dug up an old copy of my
dissertation (which in part addresses this issue). In 1984 when the DNS RFC
was being drafted (I was mistaken it was the summer of 1984 not 1985), the
proposal to use the ISO-3166 list for ccTLDs came pretty late in the game.
There are limited records of discussions about this outside of draft RFCs
kept by Feinler and emails that appear on the Namedroppers list.
As I said previously, they were already using .UK as their top-level in the
NRS hierarchy in the UK. The document record shows that even as the DNS
went into use, there was a lot of pressure for the Joint Network Team to
revise how they structured their names, not just because of the UK/GB
issue, but also because of the reversal of the names (hence the 1990 fiasco
of adding Czech). The JNT had very clear reasons for not making the
changes: they did not think the DNS would be the world standard, and had
invested both time and money in making ISO standards a reality. They did
not want to spend the money or time on making such changes to the NRS just
for DNS purposes, when they believed a new international standard was
inevitable and would require yet more changes. The X.400/X.500 systems were
simply going to replace everything anyway, so the wisdom went.
Yes, it is reasonable to argue that .GB was just a small part of the
roadkill on the information superhighway, along with the various OSI
standards. But in my memory, the fact that there was at that time
(and until 1998) ongoing political violence in Northern Ireland meant
that the political inaccuracy of using "GB" was considered to be a
real and genuine red flag; whether you called the academic community
ac.uk or uk.ac was a side issue. JANET's commitment to OSI was a factor,
but I don't think it was the main reason for insisting on .UK.

To this day, www.qub.ac.gb would I think be problematic, since
Belfast is still not in Great Britain.

If you can track down Willie Black, maybe he could add some actual facts.
Peter Kirstein could probably tell you what went on behind the scenes.
I think he's still reachable at ***@cs.ucl.ac.uk
(or possibly ***@uk.ac.ucl.cs ;-).

https://wikivividly.com/wiki/.uk#History is of some interest.
https://wikivividly.com/wiki/.gb seems to know what it's talking about.

On the anecdotal side, not only was cs.ucl.ac.uk problematic;
we had the inverse problem at CERN, when supported out of Oracle's
UK office, with mail to ***@uk.oracle.com bouncing after going
through a heuristic in our mail gateway. Somebody had to add a
heuristic inside the heuristic.

Brian
Post by Eric Gade
Post by Eric Gade
The NIC collection at CHM has info about this. The draft RFCs where Postel
first proposed TLDs (between Jan and May 85 I believe) all proposed UK as
examples. Discussion on the "Namedroppers" list at the time made it pretty
clear why: the UCL nodes used the NRS (Name Recocognition Scheme) and
already had UK at the top level (though reversed)
Post by John Levine
Post by John Levine
In another list someone was wondering why British domain names are
mostly in .UK even though the ISO 3166 code has always been .GB.
Post by John Levine
I know this came up before but can't find the discussion. Pointers or
rehash welcome. The first mention I can find of .UK is in an example in
RFC 821 in 1982, the first statement that ccTLDS would be ISO 3166 codes
was in 1984.
The only explanation I got orally was that "GB stands for Great Britain,
while UK stands for United Kingdom of Great Britain and the Northern
Ireland".
That was enough for me. Don't even remember who explained it, but it was
around the famous entry of .CS into the root zone that created the
"interesting" situation with CS.BERKELEY.EDU (and others) and massive
weird extra hacking in sendmail.cf due to the Janet "reverse" order of
labels in a domain name.
But, I might also have constructed this story in my head... :-)
paf
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Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond
2018-04-14 23:56:28 UTC
Permalink
Post by Patrik Fältström
That was enough for me. Don't even remember who explained it, but it was around the famous entry of .CS into the root zone that created the "interesting" situation with CS.BERKELEY.EDU (and others) and massive weird extra hacking in sendmail.cf due to the Janet "reverse" order of labels in a domain name.
It is indeed funny. There were several routes out of the UK that one
needed to route specifically. UCL's NSS gateway (UK.AC.UCL.CS.NSS then
UK.AC.NSFNET-RELAY or Rutherford Appleton Labs BITNET gateway
UK.AC.RL.IB then UK.AC.EARN-RELAY and these needed to swap the address
over. The relays got confused, as they would sometimes swap the DNS
addresses over and sometimes not. Of particular interest was cs.net.
--
Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond, PhD
http://www.gih.com/ocl.html
John Klensin
2018-04-15 13:13:42 UTC
Permalink
Post by Patrik Fältström
The only explanation I got orally was that "GB stands for Great Britain, while UK stands for United Kingdom of Great Britain and the Northern Ireland".
That was enough for me. Don't even remember who explained it, but it was around the famous entry of .CS into the root zone that created the "interesting" situation with CS.BERKELEY.EDU (and others) and massive weird extra hacking in sendmail.cf due to the Janet "reverse" order of labels in a domain name.
Let me try an even less complicated one, based on what I was told when
we were evaluating what became the decision to use ISO 3166 alpha-2
codes: The country code system started because of a request from the
UK to be able to manage their own DNS hierarchy rather than depending
on a US-based organization to manage the TLD. The ccTLDs are US and
UK were decided upon (and possibly delegated) before other
administrative decisions about ccTLDs were made and "UK" was what they
asked for.

FWIW: (1) While RFC 1591 was not published until 1994, it, for the
most part, described thinking and procedures that had had been in
place for years rather than anything of significant that was novel.
(2) YJ Park, whom some of you may know, tried to sort though all of
these issues and history while working on her dissertation. The
search for answers to questions of this type might reasonably start
with her and that dissertation. That should lead to some context and
references even where she does not have exact answers.

john
Nigel Roberts
2018-04-15 14:20:49 UTC
Permalink
Far be it from me to be seen to clarify John's first hand knowledge of
RFC 1591, but it's worth pointing out that the decision to use
ISO-3166-1 was not first documented in RFC 1591, but already in RFC 920
(October 1984) as follows
Countries
The English two letter code (alpha-2) identifying a country according the the ISO Standard for "Codes for the Representation of Names of Countries" [5].
As yet no country domains have been established. As they are established information about the administrators and agents will be made public, and will be listed in subsequent editions of this memo."
Stephen Deerhake and I put together an (as yet unfinished) hyperlinked
timeline of the DNS quite recently. Even though there are some places
where the editing is still a little rough, I think there is some useful
stuff which is not easily accessible otherwise.

You can find it at http://timeline.as

It does need a little work, and we need to move it from using TikiWiki
(which seemed like a good idea at the time) to something faster, but
there are some interesting things there...
Post by Patrik Fältström
The only explanation I got orally was that "GB stands for Great Britain, while UK stands for United Kingdom of Great Britain and the Northern Ireland".
That was enough for me. Don't even remember who explained it, but it was around the famous entry of .CS into the root zone that created the "interesting" situation with CS.BERKELEY.EDU (and others) and massive weird extra hacking in sendmail.cf due to the Janet "reverse" order of labels in a domain name.
Let me try an even less complicated one, based on what I was told when
we were evaluating what became the decision to use ISO 3166 alpha-2
codes: The country code system started because of a request from the
UK to be able to manage their own DNS hierarchy rather than depending
on a US-based organization to manage the TLD. The ccTLDs are US and
UK were decided upon (and possibly delegated) before other
administrative decisions about ccTLDs were made and "UK" was what they
asked for.
FWIW: (1) While RFC 1591 was not published until 1994, it, for the
most part, described thinking and procedures that had had been in
place for years rather than anything of significant that was novel.
(2) YJ Park, whom some of you may know, tried to sort though all of
these issues and history while working on her dissertation. The
search for answers to questions of this type might reasonably start
with her and that dissertation. That should lead to some context and
references even where she does not have exact answers.
john
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internet-history mailing list
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John Klensin
2018-04-15 15:02:56 UTC
Permalink
Yes, Nigel, I should (for several reasons) have remembered that
comment in RFC 920, but my recollection is still consistent with that
document and your list. That timeline list is, IMO, extremely useful
and far more accessible (and, IIR, comprehensive) that the Park
dissertation.

john
Post by Nigel Roberts
Far be it from me to be seen to clarify John's first hand knowledge of
RFC 1591, but it's worth pointing out that the decision to use
ISO-3166-1 was not first documented in RFC 1591, but already in RFC 920
(October 1984) as follows
Countries
The English two letter code (alpha-2) identifying a country according the the ISO Standard for "Codes for the Representation of Names of Countries" [5].
As yet no country domains have been established. As they are established information about the administrators and agents will be made public, and will be listed in subsequent editions of this memo."
Stephen Deerhake and I put together an (as yet unfinished) hyperlinked
timeline of the DNS quite recently. Even though there are some places
where the editing is still a little rough, I think there is some useful
stuff which is not easily accessible otherwise.
You can find it at http://timeline.as
It does need a little work, and we need to move it from using TikiWiki
(which seemed like a good idea at the time) to something faster, but
there are some interesting things there...
Post by Patrik Fältström
The only explanation I got orally was that "GB stands for Great Britain, while UK stands for United Kingdom of Great Britain and the Northern Ireland".
That was enough for me. Don't even remember who explained it, but it was around the famous entry of .CS into the root zone that created the "interesting" situation with CS.BERKELEY.EDU (and others) and massive weird extra hacking in sendmail.cf due to the Janet "reverse" order of labels in a domain name.
Let me try an even less complicated one, based on what I was told when
we were evaluating what became the decision to use ISO 3166 alpha-2
codes: The country code system started because of a request from the
UK to be able to manage their own DNS hierarchy rather than depending
on a US-based organization to manage the TLD. The ccTLDs are US and
UK were decided upon (and possibly delegated) before other
administrative decisions about ccTLDs were made and "UK" was what they
asked for.
FWIW: (1) While RFC 1591 was not published until 1994, it, for the
most part, described thinking and procedures that had had been in
place for years rather than anything of significant that was novel.
(2) YJ Park, whom some of you may know, tried to sort though all of
these issues and history while working on her dissertation. The
search for answers to questions of this type might reasonably start
with her and that dissertation. That should lead to some context and
references even where she does not have exact answers.
john
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Eric Gade
2018-04-15 15:47:37 UTC
Permalink
Also worth noting that in a May 1984 draft of RFC 920 (and a few drafts
prior to this going back to April), ISO-3166 was *not* specified as a set
for potential TLDs, but .UK *was* given as an example. In fact, the
inclusion of UK was used by many participants discussing the draft to argue
in favor of both a country-based set of TLDs and a more generic set (note
that these early drafts used .PUB and .COR instead of .COM and .ORG). It
was sometime between May and July that the ISO list was proposed as the
ccTLD set.
Post by John Klensin
Yes, Nigel, I should (for several reasons) have remembered that
comment in RFC 920, but my recollection is still consistent with that
document and your list. That timeline list is, IMO, extremely useful
and far more accessible (and, IIR, comprehensive) that the Park
dissertation.
john
Post by Nigel Roberts
Far be it from me to be seen to clarify John's first hand knowledge of
RFC 1591, but it's worth pointing out that the decision to use
ISO-3166-1 was not first documented in RFC 1591, but already in RFC 920
(October 1984) as follows
Countries
The English two letter code (alpha-2) identifying a country according
the the ISO Standard for "Codes for the Representation of Names of
Countries" [5].
Post by Nigel Roberts
As yet no country domains have been established. As they are
established information about the administrators and agents will be made
public, and will be listed in subsequent editions of this memo."
Post by Nigel Roberts
Stephen Deerhake and I put together an (as yet unfinished) hyperlinked
timeline of the DNS quite recently. Even though there are some places
where the editing is still a little rough, I think there is some useful
stuff which is not easily accessible otherwise.
You can find it at http://timeline.as
It does need a little work, and we need to move it from using TikiWiki
(which seemed like a good idea at the time) to something faster, but
there are some interesting things there...
Post by Patrik Fältström
The only explanation I got orally was that "GB stands for Great
Britain, while UK stands for United Kingdom of Great Britain and the
Northern Ireland".
Post by Nigel Roberts
Post by Patrik Fältström
That was enough for me. Don't even remember who explained it, but it
was around the famous entry of .CS into the root zone that created the
"interesting" situation with CS.BERKELEY.EDU (and others) and massive
weird extra hacking in sendmail.cf due to the Janet "reverse" order of
labels in a domain name.
Post by Nigel Roberts
Let me try an even less complicated one, based on what I was told when
we were evaluating what became the decision to use ISO 3166 alpha-2
codes: The country code system started because of a request from the
UK to be able to manage their own DNS hierarchy rather than depending
on a US-based organization to manage the TLD. The ccTLDs are US and
UK were decided upon (and possibly delegated) before other
administrative decisions about ccTLDs were made and "UK" was what they
asked for.
FWIW: (1) While RFC 1591 was not published until 1994, it, for the
most part, described thinking and procedures that had had been in
place for years rather than anything of significant that was novel.
(2) YJ Park, whom some of you may know, tried to sort though all of
these issues and history while working on her dissertation. The
search for answers to questions of this type might reasonably start
with her and that dissertation. That should lead to some context and
references even where she does not have exact answers.
john
_______
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--
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Vint Cerf
2018-04-15 20:03:50 UTC
Permalink
does anyone on the list recall the rough dates for the "Colored Book
Protocol" ? Seems possible that these were at least contemporary with DNS
and UCL was confronted with the need to translate between those and the
ARPANET and/or Internet protocols of the time.

v
Post by Eric Gade
Also worth noting that in a May 1984 draft of RFC 920 (and a few drafts
prior to this going back to April), ISO-3166 was *not* specified as a set
for potential TLDs, but .UK *was* given as an example. In fact, the
inclusion of UK was used by many participants discussing the draft to argue
in favor of both a country-based set of TLDs and a more generic set (note
that these early drafts used .PUB and .COR instead of .COM and .ORG). It
was sometime between May and July that the ISO list was proposed as the
ccTLD set.
Post by John Klensin
Yes, Nigel, I should (for several reasons) have remembered that
comment in RFC 920, but my recollection is still consistent with that
document and your list. That timeline list is, IMO, extremely useful
and far more accessible (and, IIR, comprehensive) that the Park
dissertation.
john
Post by Nigel Roberts
Far be it from me to be seen to clarify John's first hand knowledge of
RFC 1591, but it's worth pointing out that the decision to use
ISO-3166-1 was not first documented in RFC 1591, but already in RFC 920
(October 1984) as follows
Countries
The English two letter code (alpha-2) identifying a country according
the the ISO Standard for "Codes for the Representation of Names of
Countries" [5].
Post by Nigel Roberts
As yet no country domains have been established. As they are
established information about the administrators and agents will be made
public, and will be listed in subsequent editions of this memo."
Post by Nigel Roberts
Stephen Deerhake and I put together an (as yet unfinished) hyperlinked
timeline of the DNS quite recently. Even though there are some places
where the editing is still a little rough, I think there is some useful
stuff which is not easily accessible otherwise.
You can find it at http://timeline.as
It does need a little work, and we need to move it from using TikiWiki
(which seemed like a good idea at the time) to something faster, but
there are some interesting things there...
Post by Patrik Fältström
The only explanation I got orally was that "GB stands for Great
Britain, while UK stands for United Kingdom of Great Britain and the
Northern Ireland".
Post by Nigel Roberts
Post by Patrik Fältström
That was enough for me. Don't even remember who explained it, but it
was around the famous entry of .CS into the root zone that created the
"interesting" situation with CS.BERKELEY.EDU (and others) and massive
weird extra hacking in sendmail.cf due to the Janet "reverse" order of
labels in a domain name.
Post by Nigel Roberts
Let me try an even less complicated one, based on what I was told when
we were evaluating what became the decision to use ISO 3166 alpha-2
codes: The country code system started because of a request from the
UK to be able to manage their own DNS hierarchy rather than depending
on a US-based organization to manage the TLD. The ccTLDs are US and
UK were decided upon (and possibly delegated) before other
administrative decisions about ccTLDs were made and "UK" was what they
asked for.
FWIW: (1) While RFC 1591 was not published until 1994, it, for the
most part, described thinking and procedures that had had been in
place for years rather than anything of significant that was novel.
(2) YJ Park, whom some of you may know, tried to sort though all of
these issues and history while working on her dissertation. The
search for answers to questions of this type might reasonably start
with her and that dissertation. That should lead to some context and
references even where she does not have exact answers.
john
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--
Eric
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--
New postal address:
Google
1875 Explorer Street, 10th Floor
Reston, VA 20190
Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond
2018-04-15 20:44:46 UTC
Permalink
Dear Vint,

the dates are indeed similar.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coloured_Book_protocols

They were indeed contemporary. And when I used them on DEC VAX, the
address was something of the like: CBS%UK.AC.KCL.CC.ELM::ZDEE699  --
which would be ***@UK.AC.KCL.CC.ELM
(my then email address :-) )
To send to an Internet address: (you for example)
CBS%UK.AC.NSFNET-RELAY::us.va.reston.cnri::vcerf

Sending to an X.400, one had to start with:
CBS%UK.AC.MHS-RELAY::
with the rest in quotes. Often the parser in the return made an absolute
mess with X.400 sourced emails.

Also, note that CBS also accepted bang! paths, but the difference
between the % and @ delimiters in specifically routed emails for
example, vcerf%***@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk didn't exist, thus
it was :: all the way.

Kindest regards,

Olivier

ps. the "transition" came when one ran TCP-IP over X.25.
Post by Vint Cerf
does anyone on the list recall the rough dates for the "Colored Book
Protocol" ? Seems possible that these were at least contemporary with
DNS and UCL was confronted with the need to translate between those
and the ARPANET and/or Internet protocols of the time.
v
Also worth noting that in a May 1984 draft of RFC 920 (and a few
drafts prior to this going back to April), ISO-3166 was *not*
specified as a set for potential TLDs, but .UK *was* given as an
example. In fact, the inclusion of UK was used by many
participants discussing the draft to argue in favor of both a
country-based set of TLDs and a more generic set (note that these
early drafts used .PUB and .COR instead of .COM and .ORG). It was
sometime between May and July that the ISO list was proposed as
the ccTLD set.
Yes, Nigel, I should (for several reasons) have remembered that
comment in RFC 920, but my recollection is still consistent with that
document and your list.  That timeline list is, IMO, extremely
useful
and far more accessible (and, IIR, comprehensive) that the Park
dissertation.
   john
On Sun, Apr 15, 2018 at 10:20 AM, Nigel Roberts
Post by Nigel Roberts
Far be it from me to be seen to clarify John's first hand
knowledge of
Post by Nigel Roberts
RFC 1591, but it's worth pointing out that the decision to use
ISO-3166-1 was not first documented in RFC 1591, but already
in RFC 920
Post by Nigel Roberts
(October 1984) as follows
Countries
The English two letter code (alpha-2) identifying a country
according the the ISO Standard for "Codes for the
Representation of Names of Countries" [5].
Post by Nigel Roberts
As yet no country domains have been established.  As they
are established information about the administrators and
agents will be made public, and will be listed in subsequent
editions of this memo."
Post by Nigel Roberts
Stephen Deerhake and I put together an (as yet unfinished)
hyperlinked
Post by Nigel Roberts
timeline of the DNS quite recently. Even though there are
some places
Post by Nigel Roberts
where the editing is still a little rough, I think there is
some useful
Post by Nigel Roberts
stuff which is not easily accessible otherwise.
You can find it at http://timeline.as
It does need a little work, and we need to move it from
using TikiWiki
Post by Nigel Roberts
(which seemed like a good idea at the time) to something
faster, but
Post by Nigel Roberts
there are some interesting things there...
Post by Patrik Fältström
The only explanation I got orally was that "GB stands for
Great Britain, while UK stands for United Kingdom of Great
Britain and the Northern Ireland".
Post by Nigel Roberts
Post by Patrik Fältström
That was enough for me. Don't even remember who explained
it, but it was around the famous entry of .CS into the root
zone that created the "interesting" situation with
CS.BERKELEY.EDU <http://CS.BERKELEY.EDU> (and others) and
massive weird extra hacking in sendmail.cf
<http://sendmail.cf> due to the Janet "reverse" order of
labels in a domain name.
Post by Nigel Roberts
Let me try an even less complicated one, based on what I
was told when
Post by Nigel Roberts
we were evaluating what became the decision to use ISO 3166
alpha-2
Post by Nigel Roberts
codes:   The country code system started because of a
request from the
Post by Nigel Roberts
UK to be able to manage their own DNS hierarchy rather than
depending
Post by Nigel Roberts
on a US-based organization to manage the TLD.  The ccTLDs
are US and
Post by Nigel Roberts
UK were decided upon (and possibly delegated) before other
administrative decisions about ccTLDs were made and "UK"
was what they
Post by Nigel Roberts
asked for.
FWIW: (1) While RFC 1591 was not published until 1994, it,
for the
Post by Nigel Roberts
most part, described thinking and procedures that had had
been in
Post by Nigel Roberts
place for years rather than anything of significant that
was novel.
Post by Nigel Roberts
(2) YJ Park, whom some of you may know, tried to sort
though all of
Post by Nigel Roberts
these issues and history while working on her
dissertation.  The
Post by Nigel Roberts
search for answers to questions of this type might
reasonably start
Post by Nigel Roberts
with her and that dissertation.  That should lead to some
context and
Post by Nigel Roberts
references even where she does not have exact answers.
      john
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<http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history>
Post by Nigel Roberts
_______
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<http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history>
for assistance.
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<http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history>
for assistance.
--
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assistance.
--
Google
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Reston, VA 20190
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--
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http://www.gih.com/ocl.html
Brian E Carpenter
2018-04-16 04:55:00 UTC
Permalink
Yes. At CERN we were gatewaying email between DECNET, "ARPANET", Grey Book,
EUNET (aka USENET), RSCS (aka EARN aka BITNET), and of course a little
X.400 (using Steve Kille's EAN).

Here's how we believed an "ARPA" user would send mail to a CERN user in 1987:
user%host%***@wiscvm.wisc.edu

(Non-paywall preprint of the paper: http://cds.cern.ch/record/182913/files/ )

Brian
Post by Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond
Dear Vint,
the dates are indeed similar.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coloured_Book_protocols
They were indeed contemporary. And when I used them on DEC VAX, the
address was something of the like: CBS%UK.AC.KCL.CC.ELM::ZDEE699  --
(my then email address :-) )
To send to an Internet address: (you for example)
CBS%UK.AC.NSFNET-RELAY::us.va.reston.cnri::vcerf
with the rest in quotes. Often the parser in the return made an absolute
mess with X.400 sourced emails.
Also, note that CBS also accepted bang! paths, but the difference
it was :: all the way.
Kindest regards,
Olivier
ps. the "transition" came when one ran TCP-IP over X.25.
Post by Vint Cerf
does anyone on the list recall the rough dates for the "Colored Book
Protocol" ? Seems possible that these were at least contemporary with
DNS and UCL was confronted with the need to translate between those
and the ARPANET and/or Internet protocols of the time.
v
Also worth noting that in a May 1984 draft of RFC 920 (and a few
drafts prior to this going back to April), ISO-3166 was *not*
specified as a set for potential TLDs, but .UK *was* given as an
example. In fact, the inclusion of UK was used by many
participants discussing the draft to argue in favor of both a
country-based set of TLDs and a more generic set (note that these
early drafts used .PUB and .COR instead of .COM and .ORG). It was
sometime between May and July that the ISO list was proposed as
the ccTLD set.
Yes, Nigel, I should (for several reasons) have remembered that
comment in RFC 920, but my recollection is still consistent with that
document and your list.  That timeline list is, IMO, extremely
useful
and far more accessible (and, IIR, comprehensive) that the Park
dissertation.
   john
On Sun, Apr 15, 2018 at 10:20 AM, Nigel Roberts
Post by Nigel Roberts
Far be it from me to be seen to clarify John's first hand
knowledge of
Post by Nigel Roberts
RFC 1591, but it's worth pointing out that the decision to use
ISO-3166-1 was not first documented in RFC 1591, but already
in RFC 920
Post by Nigel Roberts
(October 1984) as follows
Countries
The English two letter code (alpha-2) identifying a country
according the the ISO Standard for "Codes for the
Representation of Names of Countries" [5].
Post by Nigel Roberts
As yet no country domains have been established.  As they
are established information about the administrators and
agents will be made public, and will be listed in subsequent
editions of this memo."
Post by Nigel Roberts
Stephen Deerhake and I put together an (as yet unfinished)
hyperlinked
Post by Nigel Roberts
timeline of the DNS quite recently. Even though there are
some places
Post by Nigel Roberts
where the editing is still a little rough, I think there is
some useful
Post by Nigel Roberts
stuff which is not easily accessible otherwise.
You can find it at http://timeline.as
It does need a little work, and we need to move it from
using TikiWiki
Post by Nigel Roberts
(which seemed like a good idea at the time) to something
faster, but
Post by Nigel Roberts
there are some interesting things there...
Post by Patrik Fältström
The only explanation I got orally was that "GB stands for
Great Britain, while UK stands for United Kingdom of Great
Britain and the Northern Ireland".
Post by Nigel Roberts
Post by Patrik Fältström
That was enough for me. Don't even remember who explained
it, but it was around the famous entry of .CS into the root
zone that created the "interesting" situation with
CS.BERKELEY.EDU <http://CS.BERKELEY.EDU> (and others) and
massive weird extra hacking in sendmail.cf
<http://sendmail.cf> due to the Janet "reverse" order of
labels in a domain name.
Post by Nigel Roberts
Let me try an even less complicated one, based on what I
was told when
Post by Nigel Roberts
we were evaluating what became the decision to use ISO 3166
alpha-2
Post by Nigel Roberts
codes:   The country code system started because of a
request from the
Post by Nigel Roberts
UK to be able to manage their own DNS hierarchy rather than
depending
Post by Nigel Roberts
on a US-based organization to manage the TLD.  The ccTLDs
are US and
Post by Nigel Roberts
UK were decided upon (and possibly delegated) before other
administrative decisions about ccTLDs were made and "UK"
was what they
Post by Nigel Roberts
asked for.
FWIW: (1) While RFC 1591 was not published until 1994, it,
for the
Post by Nigel Roberts
most part, described thinking and procedures that had had
been in
Post by Nigel Roberts
place for years rather than anything of significant that
was novel.
Post by Nigel Roberts
(2) YJ Park, whom some of you may know, tried to sort
though all of
Post by Nigel Roberts
these issues and history while working on her
dissertation.  The
Post by Nigel Roberts
search for answers to questions of this type might
reasonably start
Post by Nigel Roberts
with her and that dissertation.  That should lead to some
context and
Post by Nigel Roberts
references even where she does not have exact answers.
      john
_______
internet-history mailing list
http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
<http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history>
Post by Nigel Roberts
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John Demco
2018-04-16 07:50:36 UTC
Permalink
Steve Kille’s X.400 software was called PP, if I recall correctly. The EAN software came from a team led by Gerald Neufeld at the University of British Columbia.

Regards,
John Demco
(formerly at UBC)
Post by Brian E Carpenter
Yes. At CERN we were gatewaying email between DECNET, "ARPANET", Grey Book,
EUNET (aka USENET), RSCS (aka EARN aka BITNET), and of course a little
X.400 (using Steve Kille's EAN).
(Non-paywall preprint of the paper: http://cds.cern.ch/record/182913/files/ )
Brian
Post by Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond
Dear Vint,
the dates are indeed similar.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coloured_Book_protocols
They were indeed contemporary. And when I used them on DEC VAX, the
address was something of the like: CBS%UK.AC.KCL.CC.ELM::ZDEE699 --
(my then email address :-) )
To send to an Internet address: (you for example)
CBS%UK.AC.NSFNET-RELAY::us.va.reston.cnri::vcerf
with the rest in quotes. Often the parser in the return made an absolute
mess with X.400 sourced emails.
Also, note that CBS also accepted bang! paths, but the difference
it was :: all the way.
Kindest regards,
Olivier
ps. the "transition" came when one ran TCP-IP over X.25.
Post by Vint Cerf
does anyone on the list recall the rough dates for the "Colored Book
Protocol" ? Seems possible that these were at least contemporary with
DNS and UCL was confronted with the need to translate between those
and the ARPANET and/or Internet protocols of the time.
v
Also worth noting that in a May 1984 draft of RFC 920 (and a few
drafts prior to this going back to April), ISO-3166 was *not*
specified as a set for potential TLDs, but .UK *was* given as an
example. In fact, the inclusion of UK was used by many
participants discussing the draft to argue in favor of both a
country-based set of TLDs and a more generic set (note that these
early drafts used .PUB and .COR instead of .COM and .ORG). It was
sometime between May and July that the ISO list was proposed as
the ccTLD set.
Yes, Nigel, I should (for several reasons) have remembered that
comment in RFC 920, but my recollection is still consistent with that
document and your list. That timeline list is, IMO, extremely useful
and far more accessible (and, IIR, comprehensive) that the Park
dissertation.
john
On Sun, Apr 15, 2018 at 10:20 AM, Nigel Roberts
Post by Nigel Roberts
Far be it from me to be seen to clarify John's first hand
knowledge of
Post by Nigel Roberts
RFC 1591, but it's worth pointing out that the decision to use
ISO-3166-1 was not first documented in RFC 1591, but already
in RFC 920
Post by Nigel Roberts
(October 1984) as follows
Countries
The English two letter code (alpha-2) identifying a country
according the the ISO Standard for "Codes for the
Representation of Names of Countries" [5].
Post by Nigel Roberts
As yet no country domains have been established. As they
are established information about the administrators and
agents will be made public, and will be listed in subsequent
editions of this memo."
Post by Nigel Roberts
Stephen Deerhake and I put together an (as yet unfinished)
hyperlinked
Post by Nigel Roberts
timeline of the DNS quite recently. Even though there are
some places
Post by Nigel Roberts
where the editing is still a little rough, I think there is
some useful
Post by Nigel Roberts
stuff which is not easily accessible otherwise.
You can find it at http://timeline.as
It does need a little work, and we need to move it from
using TikiWiki
Post by Nigel Roberts
(which seemed like a good idea at the time) to something
faster, but
Post by Nigel Roberts
there are some interesting things there...
Post by Patrik Fältström
The only explanation I got orally was that "GB stands for
Great Britain, while UK stands for United Kingdom of Great
Britain and the Northern Ireland".
Post by Nigel Roberts
Post by Patrik Fältström
That was enough for me. Don't even remember who explained
it, but it was around the famous entry of .CS into the root
zone that created the "interesting" situation with
CS.BERKELEY.EDU <http://CS.BERKELEY.EDU> (and others) and
massive weird extra hacking in sendmail.cf
<http://sendmail.cf> due to the Janet "reverse" order of
labels in a domain name.
Post by Nigel Roberts
Let me try an even less complicated one, based on what I
was told when
Post by Nigel Roberts
we were evaluating what became the decision to use ISO 3166
alpha-2
Post by Nigel Roberts
codes: The country code system started because of a
request from the
Post by Nigel Roberts
UK to be able to manage their own DNS hierarchy rather than
depending
Post by Nigel Roberts
on a US-based organization to manage the TLD. The ccTLDs
are US and
Post by Nigel Roberts
UK were decided upon (and possibly delegated) before other
administrative decisions about ccTLDs were made and "UK"
was what they
Post by Nigel Roberts
asked for.
FWIW: (1) While RFC 1591 was not published until 1994, it,
for the
Post by Nigel Roberts
most part, described thinking and procedures that had had
been in
Post by Nigel Roberts
place for years rather than anything of significant that
was novel.
Post by Nigel Roberts
(2) YJ Park, whom some of you may know, tried to sort
though all of
Post by Nigel Roberts
these issues and history while working on her
dissertation. The
Post by Nigel Roberts
search for answers to questions of this type might
reasonably start
Post by Nigel Roberts
with her and that dissertation. That should lead to some
context and
Post by Nigel Roberts
references even where she does not have exact answers.
john
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Post by Nigel Roberts
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Tony Finch
2018-04-16 12:19:09 UTC
Permalink
Steve Kille’s X.400 software was called PP, if I recall correctly.
Our central mail relay at Cambridge is still called ppsw (short for PP
switch) even though it stopped running PP in about 1997. I have a scruffy
old ring binder on a shelf above my desk labelled "PP 5.0" in large clear
handwriting. I keep it to scare off marauding old postmasters.

Our version of the 1990 .cs snafu came a few years earlier - our computer
science department is cl.cam.ac.uk and .cl was created in 1987.

There's a glorious tutorial from the late days of multiprotocol networking
"Hints for getting mail through various gateways to and from JANET"
https://stuff.mit.edu/afs/athena/reference/net-directory/documents/JANET-Mail-Gateways.ps
(PDF version at http://dotat.at/tmp/JANET-Mail-Gateways.pdf)

Tony.
--
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the market alone does not distribute wealth or income fairly
Dr Eberhard W Lisse
2018-04-16 13:10:51 UTC
Permalink
As I may have written before I had some emails pass a few times through
my MS-DOS uuPC based '286 box because somehow VY.MIL go cut off at some
Navy installation (Great Lakes?).

And of course a few emails for Kiwis. That had me stumped for a while
until I remebered that I was using a German keyboard (where Y and Z are
transposed).

I even saw a few .UA later, but that was easy, since I can't read my own
handwriting :-)-O

el
On 16/04/2018 14:19, Tony Finch wrote:
[...]
Post by Tony Finch
Our version of the 1990 .cs snafu came a few years earlier - our computer
science department is cl.cam.ac.uk and .cl was created in 1987.
[...]
--
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***@lisse.NA / * | Telephone: +264 81 124 6733 (cell)
PO Box 8421 \ /
Bachbrecht, Namibia ;____/
Brian E Carpenter
2018-04-16 19:40:47 UTC
Permalink
Yes, my memory was slightly off, but it was Steve who brought us EAN+PP which gave the
user an approximation to X.400 service through the EAN UI. (I say "brought us" because
he worked at CERN for a few months doing so.)

Regards
Brian Carpenter
Post by John Demco
Steve Kille’s X.400 software was called PP, if I recall correctly. The EAN software came from a team led by Gerald Neufeld at the University of British Columbia.
Regards,
John Demco
(formerly at UBC)
Post by Brian E Carpenter
Yes. At CERN we were gatewaying email between DECNET, "ARPANET", Grey Book,
EUNET (aka USENET), RSCS (aka EARN aka BITNET), and of course a little
X.400 (using Steve Kille's EAN).
(Non-paywall preprint of the paper: http://cds.cern.ch/record/182913/files/ )
Brian
Post by Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond
Dear Vint,
the dates are indeed similar.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coloured_Book_protocols
They were indeed contemporary. And when I used them on DEC VAX, the
address was something of the like: CBS%UK.AC.KCL.CC.ELM::ZDEE699 --
(my then email address :-) )
To send to an Internet address: (you for example)
CBS%UK.AC.NSFNET-RELAY::us.va.reston.cnri::vcerf
with the rest in quotes. Often the parser in the return made an absolute
mess with X.400 sourced emails.
Also, note that CBS also accepted bang! paths, but the difference
it was :: all the way.
Kindest regards,
Olivier
ps. the "transition" came when one ran TCP-IP over X.25.
Post by Vint Cerf
does anyone on the list recall the rough dates for the "Colored Book
Protocol" ? Seems possible that these were at least contemporary with
DNS and UCL was confronted with the need to translate between those
and the ARPANET and/or Internet protocols of the time.
v
Also worth noting that in a May 1984 draft of RFC 920 (and a few
drafts prior to this going back to April), ISO-3166 was *not*
specified as a set for potential TLDs, but .UK *was* given as an
example. In fact, the inclusion of UK was used by many
participants discussing the draft to argue in favor of both a
country-based set of TLDs and a more generic set (note that these
early drafts used .PUB and .COR instead of .COM and .ORG). It was
sometime between May and July that the ISO list was proposed as
the ccTLD set.
Yes, Nigel, I should (for several reasons) have remembered that
comment in RFC 920, but my recollection is still consistent with that
document and your list. That timeline list is, IMO, extremely useful
and far more accessible (and, IIR, comprehensive) that the Park
dissertation.
john
On Sun, Apr 15, 2018 at 10:20 AM, Nigel Roberts
Post by Nigel Roberts
Far be it from me to be seen to clarify John's first hand
knowledge of
Post by Nigel Roberts
RFC 1591, but it's worth pointing out that the decision to use
ISO-3166-1 was not first documented in RFC 1591, but already
in RFC 920
Post by Nigel Roberts
(October 1984) as follows
Countries
The English two letter code (alpha-2) identifying a country
according the the ISO Standard for "Codes for the
Representation of Names of Countries" [5].
Post by Nigel Roberts
As yet no country domains have been established. As they
are established information about the administrators and
agents will be made public, and will be listed in subsequent
editions of this memo."
Post by Nigel Roberts
Stephen Deerhake and I put together an (as yet unfinished)
hyperlinked
Post by Nigel Roberts
timeline of the DNS quite recently. Even though there are
some places
Post by Nigel Roberts
where the editing is still a little rough, I think there is
some useful
Post by Nigel Roberts
stuff which is not easily accessible otherwise.
You can find it at http://timeline.as
It does need a little work, and we need to move it from
using TikiWiki
Post by Nigel Roberts
(which seemed like a good idea at the time) to something
faster, but
Post by Nigel Roberts
there are some interesting things there...
Post by Patrik Fältström
The only explanation I got orally was that "GB stands for
Great Britain, while UK stands for United Kingdom of Great
Britain and the Northern Ireland".
Post by Nigel Roberts
Post by Patrik Fältström
That was enough for me. Don't even remember who explained
it, but it was around the famous entry of .CS into the root
zone that created the "interesting" situation with
CS.BERKELEY.EDU <http://CS.BERKELEY.EDU> (and others) and
massive weird extra hacking in sendmail.cf
<http://sendmail.cf> due to the Janet "reverse" order of
labels in a domain name.
Post by Nigel Roberts
Let me try an even less complicated one, based on what I
was told when
Post by Nigel Roberts
we were evaluating what became the decision to use ISO 3166
alpha-2
Post by Nigel Roberts
codes: The country code system started because of a
request from the
Post by Nigel Roberts
UK to be able to manage their own DNS hierarchy rather than
depending
Post by Nigel Roberts
on a US-based organization to manage the TLD. The ccTLDs
are US and
Post by Nigel Roberts
UK were decided upon (and possibly delegated) before other
administrative decisions about ccTLDs were made and "UK"
was what they
Post by Nigel Roberts
asked for.
FWIW: (1) While RFC 1591 was not published until 1994, it,
for the
Post by Nigel Roberts
most part, described thinking and procedures that had had
been in
Post by Nigel Roberts
place for years rather than anything of significant that
was novel.
Post by Nigel Roberts
(2) YJ Park, whom some of you may know, tried to sort
though all of
Post by Nigel Roberts
these issues and history while working on her
dissertation. The
Post by Nigel Roberts
search for answers to questions of this type might
reasonably start
Post by Nigel Roberts
with her and that dissertation. That should lead to some
context and
Post by Nigel Roberts
references even where she does not have exact answers.
john
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Post by Nigel Roberts
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Lyndon Nerenberg
2018-04-18 00:20:56 UTC
Permalink
Steve Kille?s X.400 software was called PP, if I recall correctly. The
EAN software came from a team led by Gerald Neufeld at the University of
British Columbia.
And the UBC X.400 code tied together "cdnnet" (spelling/punctuation long
forgotten), a collection of mostly academic sites in Canada that ran an
X.400 mail network over X.25 (and for which UBC contributed quite a bit of
code to BSD4.[23] as I remember). X.25 was a big thing in Canada
throughout the 1980s and early-to-mid 1990s, in the form of
the Datapac network, run by the ILECs of the day.

There was a semi-serious conversation in the mid-latter 1980s about
whether the TLD for Canada might be '.cdn', since that was what the X.400
mail network used to flag its participant's addresses (ala .bitnet) in the
ARPA/Usenet world.

--lyndon
Johan Helsingius
2018-04-18 10:21:46 UTC
Permalink
Post by John Demco
Steve Kille’s X.400 software was called PP, if I recall correctly.
And if I remember correctly, the "PP" stood for "Postman Pat".

Julf
Tony Finch
2018-04-19 09:44:36 UTC
Permalink
Post by Johan Helsingius
And if I remember correctly, the "PP" stood for "Postman Pat".
You made me open the binder to find the exact quote :-)
http://mailman.postel.org/pipermail/internet-history/2018-April/004566.html

PP 5.0 manual, section 1.4 Etymology
Post by Johan Helsingius
PP is not an acronym, There is no truth in the rumour that PP stands for
"Postman Pat" -- a famous British postman.
Tony.
--
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Faeroes, East Southeast Iceland: Cyclonic, mainly southwesterly, 7 to severe
gale 9, becoming southerly or southwesterly 5 to 7. Rough or very rough. Rain
or showers. Good, occasionally poor.
Johan Helsingius
2018-04-23 19:32:11 UTC
Permalink
Thanks, Tony - I stand corrected :)

Julf
Post by Tony Finch
Post by Johan Helsingius
And if I remember correctly, the "PP" stood for "Postman Pat".
You made me open the binder to find the exact quote :-)
http://mailman.postel.org/pipermail/internet-history/2018-April/004566.html
PP 5.0 manual, section 1.4 Etymology
Post by Johan Helsingius
PP is not an acronym, There is no truth in the rumour that PP stands for
"Postman Pat" -- a famous British postman.
Tony.
Brian E Carpenter
2018-04-14 02:09:19 UTC
Permalink
John,
Post by John Levine
In another list someone was wondering why British domain names are
mostly in .UK even though the ISO 3166 code has always been .GB.
There are many versions of the story, I think. What I can say is this,
based on hearsay:

1. Please be aware that the nation state of which I was born a citizen is
called "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" (since
1922). The colloquial way to refer to it is as "the UK".

As it happens I was born in the Great Britain part, which consists of
3 countries: England, Wales and Scotland. Northern Ireland is most safely
referred to as "Northern Ireland"; referring to it as a "country", a
"province", or by the Unionist name of "Ulster", can quickly get you
into a vigorous political discussion.

2. Therefore, when SERCnet a.k.a. JANET invented Grey Book email, they
chose "UK" as the politically accurate top level domain (as in ***@uk.ac.ucl).

3. Therefore, Postel did the right thing as JANET switched over to DNS
and SMTP. Rough consensus and running code in action.

4. Unfortunately, at some time the British delegation to ISO 3166 let
through GB - politically inaccurate, but in use since 1910 (sic) as the
nationality plate on cars from the UK.

5. Therefore, we are where we are, with UK being a reserved code
in ISO 3166, .UK being the active domain, and .GB being a dead end.

Brian
Post by John Levine
I know this came up before but can't find the discussion. Pointers or
rehash welcome. The first mention I can find of .UK is in an example
in RFC 821 in 1982, the first statement that ccTLDS would be ISO 3166
codes was in 1984.
For that matter, I see that JANET still runs .GB. What still uses it?
R's,
John
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Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond
2018-04-14 23:56:53 UTC
Permalink
Agreeing to all of the other important points that were made.
Post by Brian E Carpenter
2. Therefore, when SERCnet a.k.a. JANET invented Grey Book email, they
Actually, to differentiate between NRS & DNS notation, we used to use
uppercase letters for NRS, thus ***@UK.AC.UCL.CS.NSS <--- as NRS was no
DNS, thus the complete computer's name usually needed to be provided.
--
Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond, PhD
http://www.gih.com/ocl.html
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