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From: scw%ucla-locus@cepu.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
Subject: Re: Area-code as ... states -(nf)
Message-ID: <16170@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 30-Jan-84 14:39:00 EST
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.16170
Posted: Mon Jan 30 14:39:00 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 7-Feb-84 05:54:16 EST
Lines: 45

From:  Steve Woods 

Also posted to: net.mail
	Article-I.D.: dciem.653


    >Good idea.  But area codes tend to be unique only within countries
    >(North America counts as one country here).  So there has to be
    >another convention for the overseas sites.  A logical one would be
    >the country name, truncated or abbreviated to 2-6 characters.
    >For instance, uk, france, nether.

It seems to me that a solution to this already exsists. The International
Motorting Community has a set of unique letters that define countries,
(EU,GB,FR,AL,DK etc.) I believe that they are the first letters in the
countries name (or initals) in French/English.

    >But then if we're using geographic names in Europe, why not use them
    >in North America?  I refer to STATES and PROVINCES.  They are better
    >known than area codes and they have unique abbreviations of 2 letters.
    >(How legitimate the 2-letter abbreviations are in the case of Canadian
    >provinces is questionable, but there is an established set which does
    >not conflict with the state abbreviations.)

See above, by combining the two systems you end up with a (4 or 5 letter)
combination that is both unique and easy to remember.

    >Mark Brader
    >Shall we say... {IL/ihnp4, NH/decvax, MA/linus, ...} !ON/utzoo!ON/dciem!ntt
    >Hmph, maybe a default is needed so that the null domain means a
    >backbone site.

I Would think that the default should be: no domain is the current domain.
It then is the responsabity of each site within a domain to maintain uniqueness.

There is hownever a very *LARGE* problem with this: Some sites in a given
domain may comunicate *only* with sites outside of their nominal domain.
(This problem is true of almost any domain scheme that you can come up with
that is based on geographic mappings).
--
I am, y'r obd't s'vt
Stephen C. Woods
(VA Wadsworth Med Ctr./UCLA Dept. of Neurology)
uucp:	...{ EU-CO.hao!EU-CA., EU-CA.trw-unix!, EU-CA.sdcsvax!bmcg!}cepu!scw
ARPA:	cepu!scw@ucla-locus   location: N 34 06'37" W 118 25'43"