Domain requirements
RFC 920
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(October 1984; No errata)
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Network Working Group J. Postel
Request for Comments: 920 J. Reynolds
ISI
October 1984
Domain Requirements
Status of this Memo
This memo is a policy statement on the requirements of establishing a
new domain in the ARPA-Internet and the DARPA research community.
This is an official policy statement of the IAB and the DARPA.
Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
Introduction
This memo restates and refines the requirements on establishing a
Domain first described in RFC-881 [1]. It adds considerable detail
to that discussion, and introduces the limited set of top level
domains.
The Purpose of Domains
Domains are administrative entities. The purpose and expected use of
domains is to divide the name management required of a central
administration and assign it to sub-administrations. There are no
geographical, topological, or technological constraints on a domain.
The hosts in a domain need not have common hardware or software, nor
even common protocols. Most of the requirements and limitations on
domains are designed to ensure responsible administration.
The domain system is a tree-structured global name space that has a
few top level domains. The top level domains are subdivided into
second level domains. The second level domains may be subdivided
into third level domains, and so on.
The administration of a domain requires controlling the assignment of
names within that domain and providing access to the names and name
related information (such as addresses) to users both inside and
outside the domain.
Postel & Reynolds [Page 1]
RFC 920 October 1984
Domain Requirements
General Purpose Domains
While the initial domain name "ARPA" arises from the history of the
development of this system and environment, in the future most of the
top level names will be very general categories like "government",
"education", or "commercial". The motivation is to provide an
organization name that is free of undesirable semantics.
After a short period of initial experimentation, all current
ARPA-Internet hosts will select some domain other than ARPA for their
future use. The use of ARPA as a top level domain will eventually
cease.
Initial Set of Top Level Domains
The initial top level domain names are:
Temporary
ARPA = The current ARPA-Internet hosts.
Categories
GOV = Government, any government related domains meeting the
second level requirements.
EDU = Education, any education related domains meeting the
second level requirements.
COM = Commercial, any commercial related domains meeting the
second level requirements.
MIL = Military, any military related domains meeting the
second level requirements.
ORG = Organization, any other domains meeting the second
level requirements.
Countries
The English two letter code (alpha-2) identifying a country
according the the ISO Standard for "Codes for the
Representation of Names of Countries" [5].
Postel & Reynolds [Page 2]
RFC 920 October 1984
Domain Requirements
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.
Possible Examples of Domains
The following examples are fictions of the authors' creation, any
similarity to the real world is coincidental.
The UC Domain
It might be that a large state wide university with, say, nine
campuses and several laboratories may want to form a domain. Each
campus or major off-campus laboratory might then be a subdomain,
and within each subdomain, each department could be further
distinguished. This university might be a second level domain in
the education category.
One might see domain style names for hosts in this domain like
these:
LOCUS.CS.LA.UC.EDU
CCN.OAC.LA.UC.EDU
ERNIE.CS.CAL.UC.EDU
A.S1.LLNL.UC.EDU
A.LAND.LANL.UC.EDU
NMM.LBL.CAL.UC.EDU
The MIT Domain
Another large university may have many hosts using a variety of
machine types, some even using several families of protocols.
However, the administrators at this university may see no need for
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