A Convention For Using Legal Names as Domain Names
RFC 2352

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Network Working Group                                         O. Vaughan
Request for Comments: 2352                           Vaughan Enterprises
Obsoletes: 2240                                                 May 1998
Category: Informational

           A Convention For Using Legal Names as Domain Names

Status of this Memo

   This memo provides information for the Internet community.  It does
   not specify an Internet standard of any kind.  Distribution of this
   memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (1998).  All Rights Reserved.

RFC Editor's Note

   This RFC is an independent submission that discusses a possible
   convention for allocating domain names based on corporate and other
   names as registered by law.

   It appears to depend on corporations changing their domain names from
   their present form to more cumbersome handles, such as changing
   cisco.com to cisco-systems.co.ca.us or ibm.com to international-
   business-machines.co.ny.us, without giving them an incentive to do
   so, such as deprecating the .com and .net gTLDs.  It also appears to
   legislate the structure each national registry applies to its name
   space, something which the document itself asserts is within national
   purview and not for global standardization.

   It may not be politically feasible to implement as described.

Vaughan                      Informational                      [Page 1]
RFC 2352   A Convention For Using Legal Names as Domain Names   May 1998

Table of Contents

   1.   Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

   2.   Overview of the domain space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

   3.   Possible solutions to name exhaustion  . . . . . . . . . . . 4

   4.   Proposed solution  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
   4.1   The world is not flat so why should domains be? . . . . . . 4
   4.2   The case for legal names  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
   4.3   Allocation of legal sub-domains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
   4.4   Allocation of miscellaneous sub-domains . . . . . . . . . . 6
   4.5   Identifiers in non-ASCII languages  . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
   4.6   Non-textual identifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
   5.   Security Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

   6.   References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

   7.   Authors' Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

   8.   Full Copyright Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

1.  Introduction

   The purpose of this memo is to focus discussion on the particular
   problems with the exhaustion of the top level domain space in the
   Internet and the possible conflicts that can occur when multiple
   organisations are vying for the same name. The proposed solutions in
   this document are intended as a framework for development, such that
   a general consensus will emerge as to the appropriate solution to the
   problems in each case, leading eventually to the adoption of
   standards.

2.  Overview of the domain space

   Presently the domain space is organised as a heirarchical tree-
   structured namespace with several top level domains (TLDs), and sub-
   domains beneath them. The initial TLDs allocated and rationale are
   documented in RFC 920 [1].

   The TLDs are functionally split up into 'generic' top-level domains
   (gTLDs) and two-letter ISO 3166 country domains for every country in
   which Internet connectivity is provided. The allocation of sub-
   domains under these TLDs is entirely up to the registry for that TLD.
   The registry may decide to allocate further levels of structure or
   merely allocate domains in a 'flat' manner.

Vaughan                      Informational                      [Page 2]
RFC 2352   A Convention For Using Legal Names as Domain Names   May 1998

   Example:

           +-----+         +----+                       +----+
           | COM |         | UK |                       | FR |
           +-----+         +----+                       +----+
              |             |  |                         |  |
       +---------+     +----+  +----+     +--------------+  +-----+
       | VAUGHAN |     | AC |  | CO |     | UNIV-AVIGNON |  | AXA |
       +---------+     +----+  +----+     +--------------+  +-----+
          |              |        |              |             |
      +------+    +---------+  +----------+   +-----+      +------+
      | UNIX |    | NEWPORT |  | CITYDESK |   | SOL |      | MAIL |
      +------+    +---------+  +----------+   +-----+      +------+
                       |            |
                    +----+       +-----+
                    | NS |       | FTP |
                    +----+       +-----+

       1. Flat gTLD     2. Heirarchical country      3. Flat country

   In the example we see that the gTLDs are inherently flat, as
   organisations are allocated domain names directly under the TLD.