From: John Lowry <jlowry(_at_)dave(_dot_)bbn(_dot_)com>
To: pem-dev(_at_)tis(_dot_)com
...
Serious hat now:
You will have to change your DN as often _or less_ than
you will have to change your RFC-822 mail address. I don't
accept any arguments about frequency of change as arguments
against DNs.
I guess persona type DNs don't have to change much but then neither do
the equivalent email addresses. If I wanted to pay the ACM, for
example, to forward mail to me, I would never have to change my email
address via them. But the original concept of a DN identifying a
person uniquely using existing real address and name things tends to
have a lot of DN levels that are necessary only to disambiguate rare
cases and these cause more changes than necessary.
You should see what can be done to a domain name ! Ask some of
the folks in the Australian MOD for their addresses. As more
Please give an example of what you are talking about. I know that
some FQDNs under .us are gross because an attempt was made to
predefine how to do things a la DNs. So people can use long names if
they want. It will take a log of convincing before I'll believe DN's
will be shorter than domain names although I'm certainly willing to
admit that DN's can be more mnemonic.
people become "mail enabled" (mail enhanced ?) this trend of
constructing obnoxious domain names will continue.
I contend that in the long run, DNs will average shorter and
more mnemonic than domain names. Those of you who love
How can DNs possibly end up being shorter than domain names on average
when DNs love to spell things out in full ("Digital Equipment
Corporation" versus "dec") and usually have more levels?
RFC-822 addresses answer this one:
is moron(_at_)bbn(_dot_)com
Mike Oron
or
Nick Moro
or
/dev/null for flames ...
The answser is trivial. If you want more information right now, you
finger the name. If you don't get any more information that way,
maybe the owner of the name just doesn't want to give it to you and
you are out of luck as in this case. In the future, maybe you look
up the email address in a directory and, as above, maybe you learn
more any maybe you don't.
...
:-)
John Lowry
Donald