Havard, On Fri, Sep 25, 1998 at 01:03:47AM +0200, Havard.Eidnes@runit.sintef.no wrote:

...

I think that there will be problems with "@" as the seperator. It's too much like a viable email address. I applaude the use of the domain name on the right and a domain specific unique handle on the left, the concern is the seperator. Howabout something like "%"?

I fully agree. Another option could be ":".

I think ':' would be a fine choice.

Then there is the already established practice of using "-" (as in RIPE's case), I don't see what's so terribly wrong with that. Making NIC handles into something which could be mistaken for an e-mail address just leads to confusion.

I also like '-' best but there are some non trivial problems with handles like xxx-ORG and some other organizations that use '-' in the suffix part.

(No, I don't think it's such a great idea to provide automatic mail forwarding service by the registry.)

Agreed.

I also don't think it's such a great idea to use domain names to identify the origin of the data; I think a separate name space should be used instead, e.g. one which could provide more permancence. (As Bill mentioned, what do you do when a registry closes down and its corresponding domain name is subsequently removed?)

This draft is an attempt to bring some structure in an unstructured name space. The problem occured in the first place because of a lack of cooperation. I don't see any reason why that would change if we write a nice draft and propose that somebody (who?) needs to maintain a separate namespace. I think that the only option that we have is to create something that requires *no* coordination whatsoever and that allows registries to use nearly all characters that they want to use. David K. ---