Rob,
Given the personal experiences that you seem to have had with the use of the
"***@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 "***@...", 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
<***@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 ***@...
convention?
Well first up, your domain "iname.com", uses an address of
"***@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-***@list.waikato.ac.nz
[mailto:owner-***@list.waikato.ac.nz]On Behalf Of Rob Isaac
Sent: Friday, January 14, 2000 5:15 PM
To: ***@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:
> > > >> ***@domainz.net.nz
> > > >
> > > >I wonder if I am the only person who thinks of things like
> > > >send-me-some-warez-***@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 '***@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.
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