Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!spider.co.uk!keith
From: keith@spider.co.uk (Keith Mitchell)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: Naive questions about subnets & domains
Message-ID: <8908181610.AA28277@orbweb.spider.co.uk>
Date: 18 Aug 89 16:10:19 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
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I believe the solution which puts international subsidiaries into
subdomains of the country they are in is not, in general at least,
the correct solution.

My understanding is that the the domain name space reflects an
*organisational* not geographical, hierarchy.  It is thus valid to
have sites which are in another country be subdomains of the parent
company that is a sub-domain in its own country.

i.e. We are "spider.co.uk". We have US and French subsidaries, which
are "boston.spider.co.uk" and (soon) "paris.spider.co.uk" . These
are sub-organisations within the bigger spider organisation, and the
names reflect the organisational heirarchy.

I would say that ".convex.oxford.ac.uk" is invalid, as a company
cannot be part of Oxford University in its role as part of the UK
Academic Community.

For spider, mail routing works because our only point of contact
with the external world is a UK site, international delivery is an
internal operation.

Now, if our international subsdiaries had their own links to the
outside world, in the country they are geographically located in,
then it would be appropriate for them to be registered in that
country's domain (e.g. spider.com and spider.fr).

Without the external links in the relevant country, routing which is
done on top-level domains will get confused. i.e. If we were to
register our US site as spider.com, someone in the UK mailing this
would have it routed to a US backbone site that knows about .com,
which would know you get to Spider via the UK, so back it goes.

Whether the internal and external links use UUCP, the Internet or damp
string is actually irrelvant to naming.

So, I think the general rule is to register a site as a sub-domain of
the country its mail link to the outside world is in. This does not
preclude registering a site more than once.

What we would ideally like is to have a domain ".spider", which all
our machines and sites are in from an internal point of view. This
would be registered as a sub-domain of all necessary countries, with
an external mail link in each of them. Thus, edinburgh.spider.com,
boston.spider.fr, and paris.spider.co.uk are all valid, the top level
domain merely dictating the point of entry to our internal mail
system, and the bottom one where it finishes up.  This fits in with
global mail routing based on domains.

Is this sensible ? Does the domain name system permit the same entity
appearing in distinct sub-domains, or have I the wrong end of the stick ?

I better make it clear that the above represents my current thoughts on
this topic, rather than any offically decided company policy.

Keith Mitchell

Spider Systems Ltd.             Spider Systems Inc.
Spider Park    		        12 New England Executive Park
Stanwell Street                 Burlington
Edinburgh, Scotland             MA 01803
+44 31-554 9424                 +1 (617) 270-3510

keith@spider.co.uk              keith%spider.co.uk@uunet.uu.net
...!uunet!ukc!spider!keith      keith%uk.co.spider@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk