Rob, Given the personal experiences that you seem to have had with the use of the "4service(a)domainz.net.nz" email address, I can understand how that might frustrate you. I'm sorry if our choice of the user name field in the domainz email address gives rise to specific issues with you and your customer base. FWIW, our experience is that the choice of our email address has not been raised as a major barrier before, either by Name Holders or through the ISP Channel. Emotions aside, maybe I'm missing something here. Do I understand it that RFC 2142 is being cited as the correct "convention" for user names for email addresses? Am I also to conclude that there is an issue with Domainz choice of the email address "4service(a)...", and that we might be acting in contravention to that RFC? Let us look at RFC 2142, and pick out just one technical aspect -- section 7 the DNS. Let me be even bolder and quote... ............................................................................ .......................... . DOMAIN NAME SERVICE ADMINISTRATION MAILBOX In DNS (see [RFC1033], [RFC1034] and [RFC1035]), the Start Of Authority record (SOA RR) has a field for specifying the mailbox name of the zone's administrator. This field must be a simple word without metacharacters (such as "%" or "!" or "::"), and a mail alias should be used on the relevant mail exchanger hosts to direct zone administration mail to the appropriate mailbox. For simplicity and regularity, it is strongly recommended that the well known mailbox name HOSTMASTER always be used <HOSTMASTER(a)domain>. ............................................................................ .......................... In our parlance, we tend to think of this as the "Technical Contact" for the domain. So how many technical administrators in the .nz space this HOSTMASTER(a)... convention? Well first up, your domain "iname.com", uses an address of "DNSTECH(a)inamecorp.com" for the technical contact. This is not consistent with the 2142. In the .nz Register, we've got just under 3,200 discrete "Technical contact" addresses. Here's a list of the top 25 Technical Contact "user names" (I mean the fields before the @..), USER COUNT --------- --------- soa 126 HostMaster 95 webmaster 66 support 64 admin 54 dns 49 info 39 postmaster 30 Chris 23 paul 20 tech 19 steve 18 john 18 andrew 17 noc 15 domain 15 craig 13 richard 12 mike 11 james 11 daniel 11 registry 10 nic 10 simon 10 domains 10 Under 3% (three percent) use the convention cited in the RFC, but does that make them wrong? -- not. We have almost 1,900 different User Names, hardly consistent with the RFC. In reality, there is little clustering around a few "generic" (soa, admin, etc) names either -- "generics" comprising just over 18% of all names chosen. Some Technical Contacts even use the user name of "domain" or "domains", clearly they do not seem to find the term as confusing an issue as your own experience suggests. Personally, I'd conclude that if there is an RFC issue with the Domainz email address, then that issue is much, much wider. Is it really that big an issue? ...And all because someone was polite enough to inform that they were going to be on leave... Patrick PS == Rob, while I've got you, maybe you can do spare a thought for me too -- ask how I might feel when confronted with terms such as "l33t w4r3z d00dz" A simple explanation would be welcomed, and may personally come in handy one day, happy to take it off-line :-) -----Original Message----- From: owner-nznog(a)list.waikato.ac.nz [mailto:owner-nznog(a)list.waikato.ac.nz]On Behalf Of Rob Isaac Sent: Friday, January 14, 2000 5:15 PM To: nznog(a)list.waikato.ac.nz Subject: Re: Just in case, I'm away next week Geoff Thompson wrote:
Simon Lyall wrote:
On Thu, 13 Jan 2000, Andy Gardner wrote:
4service(a)domainz.net.nz
I wonder if I am the only person who thinks of things like send-me-some-warez-d00d(a)domainz.net.nz everytime I see that address? It just goes with the general dumbing-down of the Internet, where NSI
now
sells web addresses, rather than domain names.
RFC 2142
I'm sure that there have been some pretty dubious RFC's written in the past by people seeking fame. I definately doesn't mean that the world has to adopt them all.
I'd hardly call Dave Crocker and Paul Vixie 'dubious RFC authors seeking fame'.
But then we'll end up in a discussion about the importance of standards, and someone will joke about Microsoft standards, and then the discussion will turn into......
Just try explaining the address '4service(a)domainz.net.nz' over the phone to any random clueless person, just once. Suffer through numerous corrections of any combination of 'for', '4', 'service', 'domains', 'domain', 'domains', 'domainz', '.net', '.co' and so on. Wait patiently through the inevitable half hour diversion into whether or not you can have a number in an email address. Fume quietly while clueless person says (in tones of deep distrust), "Well, *I'VE* never seen that before ... are you _sure_?". Notice how the combination of 31337 w4r3z d00d mailbox name and saccarine pun on 'domains' and 'NZ' makes your job just that little bit harder than it really needs to be. Curse Domainz. Contemplate outsourcing all of your DNS services to some third party, just so you don't have to deal with this sort of crap.
Did I bother sending this??? Geesh.
Heh, I can't believe I bothered replying to it. Slow day at the office. Regards, Rob. --------- To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to majordomo(a)list.waikato.ac.nz where the body of your message reads: unsubscribe nznog --------- To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to majordomo(a)list.waikato.ac.nz where the body of your message reads: unsubscribe nznog