At 17:54 4/12/96 +1100, Roland Turner wrote:
>Rev Simon Rumble wrote:
>
>> As I said before, my main problem with your proposal is the inconsistency
>> of having two commercial domains which do essentially the same thing.  If I
>> want to find Microsoft Australia, it seems logical to look at
>> www.microsoft.com.au.  To have to check www.microsoft.biz.au seems rather
>> redundant and would probably mean most companies would go for both.
>
>I agree with this. Despite the proliferation of wierdo domains used by
>Oz ISPs, I think that there is some benefit in having just one
>commercial domain for Australian commercial users.

This cat is already out of the bag, and has long since left the building.

.COM.AU
.NET.AU
.COM
.ON.NET
.AUST.COM
.NF
.BIZ.AU (proposed)
.ACN.AU (proposed)

etc etc etc.

There is not one domain for commercial australian users now. There are
commercial australian users in all of the above namespaces. 

See Geoff's recent mail about this - the point being that once one entity
has a name in a single, flat, namespace, the choices are to pick another
name or pick another namespace. In the internet, you have both choices (and
they are not mutually exclusive). This is already the case. BIZ.AU is not
materially affecting this situation. RIght now, plenty of Australian
organizations use .COM as their "escape valve" if they don't get "what they
want" in com.au. That will keep happening, and to some extent the more
escape valves, the better - eventually people will figure out that the DNS
is not a global name directory, it is a device to avoid remembering IP
addresses by replacing them with globally unique tokens.

Yes, people use it like/as a directory. But once the first plumber has
"plumber.com.au" the second plumber has to choose a different name or a
different namespace. There is nothing stopping that second plumber doing
either - or both, or registering in all the namespaces they can if they want
to - it's up to them. The thing you are perhaps not seeing is that there is
no huge problem with this. If a customer can't find you, it's YOUR problem
as a business to find a way that works. If your chosen name is "gone" in
com.au, you need to find another name or another namespace. I don't think
.COM (the de-factor escape valve for this) will keep being a great choice
for much longer - do you?

Simon
---
Simon Hackett, Technical Director, Internode Systems Pty Ltd
31 York St [PO Box 284, Rundle Mall], Adelaide, SA 5000 Australia
Email: simon§internode.com.au  Web: http://www.on.net
Phone: +61-8-8223-2999          Fax: +61-8-8223-1777