[svlug] Domain name grab

[Ray Olszewski]

At 05:24 PM 9/28/98 -0700, javilk at polly.mall-net.com wrote:
[deleted]
>   What the web desperatly needs, is a LOCALIZED domain name system, so
>that wendys.burger  would route to the closest wendy's, rather than
>corporate headquarters.  That would pave the way for a lot of local
>businesses getting on the web.  Right now, it makes no sense to hit
>pizza.com for a slice, because the infrastructure required is just too
>huge -- accept messages, determine point of origin, route to regional
>pizza joint.
[deleted]

This is an interesting idea, but I think you are emphasizing the wrong half
of the problem. Suppose a nationwide chain (let's say Home Depot; I'm tired
of food examples) wants its Web site to direct me to the Web site of the
nearest store. It can handle internally keeping track of its *own* stores;
that's a pretty straightforward problem. And whoever owns plumber.com can
easily sell territories to independents. The "infrastructure" isn't *that*
huge ... with one exception: how does a directing Web site figure out where
*I* am (at least without introducing troubling privacy concerns)? 

Actually, it could, at least in principle, if I had a domain in the .us
domain system. (Actually it would only locate my home, not, say, the hoel
where I was sitting, getting more and more hungry ... whoops, back to food!)
Except for a few variations (e.g., each state usually has a statewide k12
subdomain), this domain is organized myname.cityname.statecode.us . Palo
Alto, for example, probably is myname.paloalto.ca.us . I suppose ZIP codes
would be even tidier (surely census tracts are a bit too targeted!). 

Management is nicely decentralized, with none of the NSI nonsense, though
that introduces the problem of weak whois -- the national whois doesn't list
individual domains, just second- and third-level (i.e., state and city or
other) subdomain managers. The third-level domains are supposed to maintain
their own whois servers, and I'm not sure how reliably that is done (I can't
figure out how to find any of them for nslookup or host -- finally, the
obligatory tie back to Linux! I was getting worried there).

Although this domain hierarchy exists, it appears to be pretty much
neglected. Would it be worth the effort for someone to promote it as an
alternative to .com for individuals? Perhaps, but I don't really know why
the domain has been relatively unsuccessful to date in attracting
registrants, so any opinion I have would be pretty uninformed.

Beyond that, I suppose a directing Web site could try to do find people via
whois. But not everyone is physically located near where his or her account
is (would you get the electrician nearest your home or your office? or your
ISP? and what about aol.com?), so this too is messy.

Oh well, enough blue-skying. Interesting idea, javilk.

------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"---
Ray Olszewski                                        -- Han Solo
762 Garland Drive
Palo Alto, CA  94303-3603
650.321.3561 voice                               ray at comarre.com
650.322.1209 fax                 http://www.comarre.com/ray.html
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