The CA Domain: An Introduction (Updated 1997 May 31) This is an introduction to the CA domain for Canada. The domain is intended to be a useful, manageable means to refer to Canadian computing and communications resources within the worldwide Internet. The CA domain is registered with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), the authority for top-level Internet domains. CA is the two-letter code for Canada according to the ISO 3166 standard used for country domains. The remainder of this document describes the history of the CA domain, its basic structure, the registration process, and instructions on how to get more information, including an application form. History The CA domain was registered with IANA in May, 1987. The registration was organized by representatives of a network known as CDNnet. A broadly-based committee was formed consisting of representatives from all of the known Canadian groups interested in the Internet: CDNnet, the Defence Research Establishment, NetNorth, and the UUCP community. During the remainder of 1987, the structure of the namespace was agreed upon and a registration procedure was devised. The first registration was approved early in 1988. Subsequently the CA domain committee has been expanded to include representatives from other organizations, primarily Internet Service Providers. Domain Structure In choosing a structure for the Canadian namespace, the main goals were to use names that make sense to people, to create a structure which will be useful for many years, and to facilitate the administration of the namespace. The Internet Domain Name System (DNS) is described in several documents including RFCs 974, 1032, 1034, and 1035, and others. The domain name space is a hierarchy, and domains are administrative entities. These two facts together ensure that there is a decentralized means for managing the namespace, and especially for assigning unique names. Each domain has an administrator who is responsible for the administration of the names within the domain. Some of this authority and responsibility may be delegated to subdomain administrators; this achieves further decentralization. The CA domain is structured according to Canadian political geography with entities registered at appropriate levels: - Second-level subdomains under CA are provincial and territorial abbreviations, and the names of national organizations. - Third-level subdomains are locality names, and provincial and territorial organization names. - Fourth-level subdomains are for local organizations. - It is expected that fourth-level subdomains will be used for individuals too although this has not been decided yet. Graphically this can be represented as follows: CA | ----------------------- | | province/territory national organization | --------------------------- | | locality provincial/territorial (e.g. city, town) organization | ----------------------- | | residential municipal person organization The application form includes rules for determining the appropriate level and name for a new subdomain. Registration Procedure Here is a summary of how subdomain applications are handled: - A committee member (or the registrar) receives an application from an organization. The member works with the organization as necessary to clean up the application, obtain missing information, choose a more appropriate name, correct errors, etc. - The committee member sends the application by e-mail to the address "ca-domain-checker@relay.cdnnet.ca" to ensure that it is syntactically correct. This step is repeated if necessary until a clean result is obtained. - The committee member sends the application to the committee, along with any supporting documentation such as justification for a particular requested organizational abbreviation. - The application is open for committee discussion for at least a week. There may be feedback from the committee member to the applicant during this process. - The subdomain is registered, public archives are updated, DNS information is installed if necessary, and the registration is sent to the committee. Other procedures, such as updating the UUCP maps, may be triggered. - The committee member informs the applicant of the decision. Applying for a Subdomain To retrieve CA domain information via anonymous FTP or World Wide Web, use this URL: ftp://ftp.cdnnet.ca/ca-domain Here is the URL for the CA subdomain application form: ftp://ftp.cdnnet.ca/ca-domain/application-form Presently the Registrar does not charge for registration services; this is under review. We are working on a web-based application form, but this is not ready yet. Please note that the CA domain is for Canadian organizations. To search for a given CA domain name, please download a copy of the file ftp://ftp.cdnnet.ca/ca-domain/index-by-organization and look through that. This file is updated daily. We are working on a web search tool. To retrieve a particular registration, download the appropriate file from the ftp://ftp.cdnnet.ca/ca-domain/reg directory. For example, to retrieve the xyz.on.ca registration, download this file: ftp://ftp.cdnnet.ca/ca-domain/reg/ca.on.xyz ============== To receive an IP network number, please contact your upstream Internet Service Provider or contact the InterNIC: http://www.internic.net To retrieve information about other domains, e.g. COM, EDU, NET, and ORG, please use this URL: http://www.internic.net John Demco, CA Domain Registrar E-mail: ca-registrar@cdnnet.ca Department of Computer Science Tel: +1 (604) 822 6724 University of British Columbia Fax: +1 (604) 822 5485 Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z4