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To: Paul Richards <p.richards@elsevier.co.uk>
cc: hackers@FreeBSD.org
Subject: Re: A call for DNS secondaries to server for <dom>.freebsd.org 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Fri, 08 Dec 1995 15:51:46 GMT."
             <199512081551.PAA13026@cadair.elsevier.co.uk> 
Date: Fri, 08 Dec 1995 08:45:05 -0800
Message-ID: <28692.818441105@time.cdrom.com>
From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com>
Sender: owner-hackers@FreeBSD.org
Precedence: bulk

> It's been in the back of my mind to grab the freebsd.org.uk domain since
> I noticed Linux has one.
> 
> Do other countries have similar namespace conventions? We could get all
> the freebsd.org.<country code> domains allocated. This would reduce
> namserver load on freebsd.org's nameservers because the top level
> domain queries would go to the countries org nameserver and not
> freebsd.org's.  i.e queries to ftp.freebsd.org.uk will come to the uk.

Hmmmm.  I think that this proposal has definite merit on the grounds
you list (name lookup optimization), but it also has the disadvantage
of significantly more complexity.  We need to get all the subdomains
registered with RIPE or some other authority, and in some cases this
could cost money (I don't know if the NIC's policies have been
promulgated elsewhere).  Subdividing freebsd.org, on the other hand,
we can do entirely ourselves and don't need to cut through red tape
for each and every new subdomain.

Mind you, I see no reason why *both* couldn't be done.  We do the
subdividing of freebsd.org now and if certain countries manage to
create freebsd.org.<dom> domains as well later, they can simply map
the existing information across into the new domain.  The
administration of this might get a little tricky in some cases, but
nothing that a little close communication wouldn't cure.

I think we should also consider the possible confusion this may
cause and only create new subdomains in pairs.  E.g. it would be
really evil if we had ftp.fr.freebsd.org, ftp.it.freebsd.org, etc.
and then an ftp.freebsd.org.uk but no ftp.uk.freebsd.org.
It would cause no end of questions.

What do other folks think?  Are we perhaps over-complicating this?

					Jordan