Re: [dnsext] RFC 2142 and "organization's top level domain"

[Dave CROCKER <[e-mail]>]

On 9/10/2010 6:25 PM, Brian Dickson wrote:
>        organization's principal domain name
>
> I think, in some regards, "organization" is itself ambiguous, in two regards.
> One, is that a large entity could have several internal organizations.


Folks,

Thanks for the quick response(s) (counting private email)...

I should have phrased my note as:

      "The apps folks had extensive discussions and explored various 
alternatives and converged on a term and I would like to know whether the DNS 
community sees a serious problem with using the term "organization's principal 
domain name".

Since I failed to do that, I wound up inviting you folks to re-explore the topic 
more generally, including ground the apps group had already covered.  So I 
should go into some detail about the apps discussion:

1. The requirement is for a term that can be widely used, and particularly by 
regular (non-geek) users.  This imposes a significant burden in making the term 
be relatively natural and friendly for everyday use by everyday people.

2. The apps discussion explored "registered" and "delegated" before getting to 
"principal".  About the first two, it was decided that the use of a DNS term of 
art in a way that might not be sufficiently accurate or precise would be 
ill-advised.  All nodes are delegated; hence that word is not sufficiently 
precise.  "Registered" almost won, but finally caused some discomfort.  So the 
preference was for a term that does not carry DNS technical baggage.

3. Organization is a nicely generic term, although the fact of sub-organizations 
got mentioned in the earlier discussion, too. However it's not clear that that 
really causes any problems.  For whatever organization is being referenced -- 
parent, subsidiary, whatever -- there can be a domain name that it uses that is 
a "root" for that organization.  (Again note that we can't use "root" as a 
choice here.)

4. "Primary" almost won but it tends to suggest that there are competing, 
parallel choices and that's not intended.  Principal can indeed suggest 
competing alternatives, but it also can simply refer to a core term, without 
there needing to be alternatives. The distinction between having only one 
principal domain name and having multiple is covered by prefacing with 'a' when 
there are multiple and 'the' when there is one.

We can, of course, wander over the solution space if folks really want to, but 
again, what I'm most interested in is whether the DNS community sees fundamental 
problems with the phrase.

Thanks!


d/
-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net