From ncr-sd!hp-sdd!hplabs!sri-unix!husc6!hao!boulder!forys Mon Oct 26 12:46:38 PST 1987

In article <1885@killer.UUCP> billw@killer.UUCP (Bill Wisner) writes:
> Foreign sites use the country abbreviation for the top-level domain,
> i.e. .UK for the United Kingdom.

Quite correct, given that you are looking at the address from the "domain
system" point of view (which, I'm sure you are).  However, all the world
is not the same!  If you step into the United Kingdom their top level
becomes "UK.".  The NRS decided to use names like "UK.AC.Ucl.Cs" (note the
reverse order).  While this makes for more work in gateways between the
two systems, the result is *almost* always transparent to the end user
(i.e. under our "domain system", you would still use "Cs.Ucl.AC.UK").

Just adding a little dirt to the clear water...  :-)
---
Jeff Forys @ UC/Boulder Engineering Research Comp Cntr (303-492-4991)
forys@boulder.Colorado.EDU  -or-  ..!{hao|nbires}!boulder!forys


Another way to look at the Internet is by upper-level domains.  
There is one of these for each country in the world (e.g\. ".uk" for
United Kingdom), plus several "meta-countries" within the United States:  
.com (commercial organizations), .edu (educational 
institutions), .gov (government agencies), 
\.org (other organizations), 
There are numerous commercial organizations having no connection with 
DoD that are officially registered Internet sites in the .com domain.  
Any organization (or person) can register their system as a domain 
within a suitable existing zone; for instance, there is a public-access
Unix system here in San Diego which is registered as cts.com .  
More information on Internet and its components^--
zones, domains, subdomains, parks, etc.^-- will appear soon in this space.  


From ncr-sd!hp-sdd!ucsdhub!sdcsvax!ucbvax!ucbcad!ames!elroy!cit-vax!oberon!bloom-beacon!mit-eddie!rutgers!princeton!udel!rochester!PT.CS.CMU.EDU!sei!sei.cmu.edu!pdb Fri Oct 23 10:24:13 PDT 1987

In article <5533@sgistl.SGI.COM> larry@sgistl.SGI.COM (Larry Autry) writes:
>I have noticed different suffixes in the mail addresses on the net. Some are
>.COM, and others are .UUCP.  What are the different suffixes and domain types?
>I have seen other suffixes besides the two mentioned.

The current list of top level domains is (at the moment):

  .COM  -  Commercial organizations
  .EDU  -  Educational institutions
  .GOV  -  Government organizations
  .MIL  -  Military sites
  .NET  -  Network administration sites
  .ORG  -  Other random "organizations" that don't fit in any other domain

plus, the ISO country codes (like .UK, .AU, etc.) are top-level domains
for the associated countries.

The .ARPA domain is a temporary top-level domain for old ARPANET/MILNET
sites who haven't converted to the domain system yet.  There is no such
thing as the .UUCP domain (at least, as far as the root nameservers are
concerned);  it is a "fake" domain that some mailers happen to know how
to deal with.

--Pat.


The world has been partitioned in a number of top-level domains, and
absolute addresses are defined in relation to these domains.  As of this
writing, top-level domains include at least

au 	Australia            	 jp 	Japan
ca 	Canada               	 kr 	Republic of Korea
ch 	Switzerland          	 mil	Internet Military
com	Internet Commercial  	 net	Internet Networks
de 	West Germany         	 nl 	Netherlands
edu	Internet Educational 	 org	Internet Organizations
fi 	Finland              	 se 	Sweden
fr 	France               	 uk 	United Kingdom Network
gov	Internet Government  	 us 	Internet Unites States
il 	Israel	

Until the transition to network-independent domains is complete, the following
pseudo top-level domains are often seen.  Their purpose is to allow the
specification of addresses independently of the actual route:

arpa	DARPA Internet                	irl	Irish Research Network
bitnet	Because It's There Network  	isanet	Iceland
cdn	Canadian Research Network	mailnet	EDUCOM Network (dead)
cern	CERN, Switzerland		mlnet	University of Western Ontario
chunet	Swiss University Network	osiride	Italian Research Networks
csnet	Computer Science Network	oz	Australian University Network
dfn	German Research Network	   	sunet	Swedish University Network
dunet	Danish University Network	surfnet	Netherlands Research Network
funet	Finnish University Network   	uninett	Norwegian University Network
iris	Spanish Research Network	uucp	Unix Network

Jean-Francois Lamy                     lamy@ai.toronto.edu, lamy@ai.utoronto
AI Group, Dept of Computer Science     lamy%ai.toronto.edu@relay.cs.net
University of Toronto, Canada M5S 1A4  {uunet,watmath}!ai.toronto.edu!lamy