Re: [ga] .ct

["J-F C. (Jefsey) Morfin" <jefsey@club-internet.fr>]

On 20:15 09/10/02, Elisabeth Porteneuve said:
>Below is a copy of one of old NSF documents on connectivity.
>To connect the countries, it was necessary they have names.

Long before the need was to support the foreign hackers trying to get into 
Arpanet at the lowest cost with the strangest devices. From a joke about 
Jordan we got accustomed to name that Hacker groups using the 2 letters 
telex code. Also because "pirate telex services" were everywhere at that 
time and were good hackers. We could mostly support them in using Telex or 
"odd telex" or even Teletex systems (I registered a Telex e-mailbox on ITT 
probably early 1984 (?) to be able to support them). I had a Telex/Mail 
operator with WUI in Cupertino who was very good at all that (named IEMS). 
They helped people a lot during the Mexico earthbreak (what was the year?). 
I carried several projects with them. Also with C&W and their HK operators 
(they had a large processor there: we even studied an international 
chess/go sever to develop traffic with Saudia :-)

Using the 2 letters ISO codes permitted us not to confuse them as a 
usergroup with the paying regular users from the state monopolies who were 
named after the ISO 3166 3 letters codes (FRA for France).

By the way I suppose the eldest stable and profesional user was Ichbia we 
connected to the Phoenix Multics for the development of Adda. I do not 
recall if his root name was "BULL" or "FRB" (I will ask him, he leaves next 
door), but he could certainly be labeled as the first early ".fr". We had 
proposed to interconnect Cyclades in may 1978: that did not go through 
(however the ESA network was connected and permitted very "strange" 
international relations).

so you see, Michael, IANA is a very young invention. As such it has no real 
value : look at the ICANN contract over IANA functions. They got it for 
less than $ 10.000 (I accept that they had to pay for the table, the chais 
and the screens...:-).

jfc