# URN namespace

Michael Shapiro (mshapiro@ncsa.uiuc.edu)
Tue, 15 Aug 1995 21:19:29 -0500 (CDT)

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    From: mshapiro@ncsa.uiuc.edu (Michael Shapiro)

    Message-Id: <9508160219.AA14502@void.ncsa.uiuc.edu>

    Subject: URN namespace

    To: uri@bunyip.com

    Date: Tue, 15 Aug 1995 21:19:29 -0500 (CDT)

> Jim Conklin wrote:
> I respectfully disagree. URL's worked and were accepted and
> used, and people remember them (yes, REMEMBER them!) precisely
> BECAUSE people very INTENTIONALLY attach semantic names to
> them.
>
> Karen R. Sollins wrote:
> I'm afraid I disagree with you at least partially. Yes, URLs
> were accepted and used. But I don't consider them terribly
> successful. First, because they do often include semantics,
> we expect certain URLs to work. But, we get too many
> surprises. For example, www.mit.edu was grabbed by a student
> computing organization early on, so now MIT uses web.mit.edu,
> much to many people's confusion. Because it is a single
> namespace and we are using a great deal of abbreviation to
> make it compact, there is contention and disagreement over
> allocation of names. That's the first problem.
>
> Brian Behlendorf wrote:
> Any place with a common namespace that is expected to handle
> everyone is going to have namespace collision problems as long
> as the goal of the namespace is to provide pneumonics. If you
> remove the need for pneumonics, then you don't have the
> namespace collision, but you make the reference much less
> transcribable. MIT could distribute the URL
> http:///18.72.0.31/ instead of http://web.mit.edu/ if it
> really wanted and solve that problem without URN's, but
> obviously they're willing to live with the "drawback" of using
> web.mit.edu.

Isn't the fact that the existing hostname space is also being
used for URLs a major problem? Wouldn't a separate namespace
(perhaps within DNS with a new toplevel domain) be a step in the
right direction? The existing hostname is used for mail (and
other services). Why should email and URNs share the same name
space? The U.S. post office and the phone company don't share
the same name space. Neither do drivers licenses nor social
security numbers.

    --
    Michael Shapiro                   mshapiro@ncsa.uiuc.edu
    NCSA                              (217) 244-6642
    605 E Springfield Ave. RM 152CAB  fax: (217) 333-5973
    Champaign, IL 61820

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