----- Original Message ----- From: "Duke Hillard" Sent: Friday, March 08, 2002 4:23 PM
: The following TLDs are in the usdom.tab for analog 4.16 : but don't appear at IANA. I am guessing [...] that they : do appear in latest version analog for sake of legacy : logs or servers. : : cs = Czech Republic and Slovakia : fx = France (European Territory) : gb = United Kingdom : su = Former USSR : zr = Democratic Republic of the Congo One of your [snipped] guesses was correct: each of the above five ccTLDs appear in the *dom.tab files for the latest version of Analog [5.21]. On the subject of *dom.tab files ... based on my initial perusal of the [uk|us]dom.tab files distributed with Analog 5.21, I have decided to go ahead and revise the domain file with the aim of providing it to others who might wish to use it. At this point, I have restructured the file into separate categories (ccTLDs, generic TLDs, etc.), added in entries known to be missing (one ccTLD, a number of generic TLDs), reworded a few of the descriptions associated with entries, and begun to revise the "organization level" numbers for certain entries, based on information from their respective registrars. Anyway, I have a number of questions, I'm hoping someone with more experience with the domain file and/or Stephen Turner can lend a hand here. (1) Is there any outside interest in the contents of the revised file? I ask only because it might impact some lesser decisions that have to be made about the file itself. (2) Am I to interpret the following passage from the Analog Web site [http://www.analog.cx/docs/domfile.html] to mean that, given the choice of assigning a higher or lower organization level, I ought to prefer the higher: "There are some problems with [assigning a single level]. A few countries have organisations at both levels 2 and 3 [...] In those cases I've favoured false negatives over false positives by using the bigger number. (Also there is a correction which will make most of them right again: the first component is always removed from a hostname of three or more components.)" I'm most interested in the "correction" mentioned - does it really improve results at all? Is it *really* better to be more restrictive when choosing a single "level"? Has anyone been bitten by the finality of the present single-value assignment for organization levels? Getting the most out of the current single-value system has me stumped in the face of real-world naming practices. This is where I need a little help. (3) There are a surprising number of ccTLDs that take a mixed approach to "organization levels" -- a lot of cases where the value could be 2 or 3 (or even more) with no clear favoring of one over the other. Some generic TLDs exhibit similar mixing. Is there a chance, Stephen, of introducing greater flexibility into the domain file. I was thinking that some manner of not only accounting for the first-level component, but all possible second-level (and so on) components might permit truer sorting and organization identification. I don't know how this might impact performance, but here is an example taken from one real ccTLD, .sc [http://www.nic.sc/policies.html]: sc Seychelles sc.com Commercial sc.gov Government sc.net Network sc.org Non-Profits sc.edu Educational [The above reversed to see the branching more clearly -- be thankful I didn't select a "deeper" scheme, such as that for traditional .us organizations. :p] I'm working out how to best represent mixed levels of domains in an easy-to-modify configuration file, but permitting explicit mapping of known mixed domain groupings would: * alleviate the need to pick one level over another; * add more depth to reports, if chosen -- especially in cases where the naming scheme may indicate geographic (e.g., one .no scheme) or other meaningful distinctions; * enhance flexibility and readability by specifying actual naming practices rather than abstract numbers; * allow for custom subdomain separation to identify organizational relations accurately (e.g., bigtelco.net offers small businesses domains like foo.bigtelco.net where foo bears no relation to bigtelco other than when it pays the bills; and * permit "tiering" of domain reports by allowing users to select identification of specific domains or only the generic subgroups that naming practices form. This is turning into a rant... I'm more than willing to help collect the information on actual naming schemes (heck, I'm already doing that now), I'd just like to know whether there is interest and/or developer support behind an improvement in the domain file. As formerly-rigid grouped TLDs (.ca, .us, any ccTLD looking to forego organization for the almighty dollar, etc.) adopt naming schemes that allow names outside grouped categories, this seems like an important topic to consider in making the most of Analog. Maybe this is too much to ask? Anyway, I hope this sparks some discussion -- I really would like to know whether anyone out there would be interested in a modified domain file. It may take a couple days to properly document the changes I made, though ... - don +------------------------------------------------------------------------ | This is the analog-help mailing list. 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