[Ctn-crosscom] Role of the ISO 3166 standard and the IETF in the delegation of TLDs

Tue Mar 17 11:39:25 UTC 2015

At a previous call I talked about what I remembered from the early
days (the early eighties) in establishing (cc)TLDs and the relation
with ISO 3166 and promised to write something up. Instead of
relying on my (faulty) memory I actually read up what is published in
the IETF RFCs. As said on 16 March it took some more time the expected
but here it is. Enjoy,

	jaap

There are quite some stories around about these early days but there
is little documentation so in the end I decided not to add more
stories from memory but do a quick scan about what is documented. I
want to add a disclaimer that this is not pretending to be a complete
history of how the current policy of came into existence.

In the earlier days there was just the ARPA net and after the TCP/IP
protocols got introduced multiple coexistent networks where possible
and the internet was born.

The use of the domain system instead of a fixed file was first
mentioned in RFC 881 (November 1983, The Domain Names Plan and
Schedule) and it also proposes the split of ARPANET and MILNET. RFC
882 and RFC 882 gives a description of an early form of DNS. An update
of the implementation schedule can be found in RFC 897.

A refinement of this plan is published in RFC 920 (October 1984)
and defines not only the ARPA, GOV, EDU, COM, MIL, and ORG domains
but also mentions that for country domains the ISO 3166 standards
should be used. (It also proposes a category "Multiorganizations"
which looks like the start of the INT domain). There is an
implementation schedule in RFC 921.

RFC 1032 (November 1987) "DOMAIN ADMINISTRATORS GUIDE" sets some
policies for the way how domains should be administrated. It sets
a policy for the use of ISO 3166 for country names. It is worth to
note that it mentions the use of alpha-3 codes in case they collide
with codes use for states by the U.S. Postal Services. As far as I
know, this idea never got implemented.

Actual delegations of ccTLDs have happened since 1985. It was mainly
done by academic institutions. Governments where not interested in
the Internet and where more interested in the OSI protocols and the
X.400 and X.500 addressees (RFC 1484, 1617).

Meanwhile the internet was growing, IANA got established and that
led to RFC 1591 explaining the practice at that time (March 1994).
Do note the date. In the seven years there has been quite some
development in the way the (top level-) domains got administrated
Details of this process are not publicly documented as far as I
know.

In the late nineties the interest into the Internet and the Domain
System exploded culminating into creation of ICANN and the current
policies.

Some more RFCs which deal with delegations have been produced such as
RFC 2606 (June 1999, Reserved Top Level DNS Names). Others deal with
policies inside TLDs. As an example RFCs 1386, 1480, 1811, 1816, and
2146 talk about the structure of the .US and .GOV domains emphasizing
the hierarchical character of the domain system. The hierarchical
structure is also discussed RFC 2352 "A Convention For Using Legal
Names as Domain Names (May 1998).

The "Memorandum of Understanding Concerning the Technical Work of the
Internet Assigned Numbers Authority" [MOU], RFC 2860 (June 2000),
notably section 4.3 (March 2000) formally ends the role of IETF in the
policy process for top level domains.

There are a couple of RFCs which talk about domains, such as RFC 3071
(Reflections on the DNS, RFC 1591, and Categories of Domains,
(February 2001).

The reclassification of the .ARPA into the "Address and Routing
Parameter Area Domain" is documented in RFC 3172 (September 2001).
This domain became also the home for the IPv6 reversed domains (RFC
3152, August 2001; RFC 4159 August 2005).

More recently RFC 6761 (February 2913, Reserved Top Level DNS Names).
The latter one (proposed as standard) establishes an IANA registry for
special TLD names which are not meant as domain names but to be used
in non-dns related protocol. Whether this will indeed become standard
is still to be seen.

The official home of page for the ISO 3166 standard can be found at
<http://www.iso.org/iso/home/standards/country_codes.htm>. This page
has a link to the alpha-2 list of codes
<https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#search/code/>. This is gives a list of
all country 657 country codes of which only 249 are assigned. This
link does lists also the status of the most non-assigned codes.

The ISO 3166 Part 1 has multiple lists. What is general called the
ISO3166 alpha-2 list (or a variation of this phrase) is actually
Section 9, "List one: Alphabetical list of country names in English
and their code elements". The list has various fields. If there is
interest I offer to write a similar note like this one to discuss the
standard and this list.

	jaap

Notes:

DDN/MILET: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Data_Network

RFCs can be found at the rfc-editor site <https://www.rfc-editor.org>
     and are easily be found by number as in the nest URL:
     <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc881.txt>.

[MOU]
      <https://www.icann.org/resources/unthemed-pages/ietf-icann-mou-2000-03-01-en?routing_type=path>

An old talk about ISO 3166:
      <http://meetings.ripe.net/ripe-54/presentations/ISO_3166.pdf>