[ga] Old proposal

[Sandy Harris <sandy@storm.ca>]

I recently had occasion to look at RFC 920
http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/rfc/rfc0920.txt

This was the basic definition of the current domain name system, October 1984.
It replaced the original Arpanet system which was used from roughly 1970.

It has some interesting text:

| Initial Set of Top Level Domains
| 
|   The initial top level domain names are:
| 
|      Temporary
| 
|         ARPA  ...
| 
|      Categories
| 
|         GOV  ...
|         EDU  ...
|         COM  ...
|         MIL  ...
|         ORG  ...
| 
|      Countries
| 
|         The English two letter code ...
| 
|      Multiorganizations
| 
|         A multiorganization may be a top level domain if it is large,
|         and is composed of other organizations; particularly if the
|         multiorganization can not be easily classified into one of the
|         categories and is international in scope.

My question is whether we should resurrect the "multiorganisation" category.
If there are international organisations meeting the criteria (and my guess
would be there are), give them all TLDs now.

It then continues with:

| Possible Examples of Domains
| 
|   The following examples are fictions of the authors' creation, any
|   similarity to the real world is coincidental.

[snip]

|   The CSNET Domain
| 
|      There may be a consortium of universities and industry research
|      laboratories called, say, "CSNET".  This CSNET is not a network
|      per se, but rather a computer mail exchange using a variety of
|      protocols and network systems.  Therefore, CSNET is not a network
|      in the sense of the ARPANET, or an Ethernet, or even the
|      ARPA-Internet, but rather a community.  Yet it does, in fact, have
|      the key property needed to form a domain; it has a responsible
|      administration.  This consortium might be large enough and might
|      have membership that cuts across the categories in such a way that
|      it qualifies under the "multiorganization rule" to be a top level
|      domain.
| 
|      One might see domain style names for hosts in this domain like
|      these:
| 
|         CIC.CSNET
|         EMORY.CSNET
|         GATECH.CSNET
|         HP-LABS.CSNET
|         SJ.IBM.CSNET
|         UDEL.CSNET
|         UWISC.CSNET

I have similar question here. Are there communities of this type today that
should have their own domains? (My guess would be no, they've all long since
been absorbed into the wider Internet community.) If there are, then perhaps
they should have their own domains immediately.
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