Area-code as ... states -(nf)

[scw%ucla-locus at cepu.UUCP]

From:  Steve Woods <cepu!scw at ucla-locus>

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<USA>,GB,FR,AL<D>,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)
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