5 ms·

I often wish that the schema around domain names was reversed, to reflect something closer to Usenet. Instead of news.ycombinator.com we would use com.ycombina

by anw 6y ago

I often wish that the schema around domain names was reversed, to reflect something closer to Usenet. Instead of news.ycombinator.com we would use com.ycombinator.news, similar to how a news group might be rec.arts.punkrock or comp.os.linux. This makes more logical sense to me, as you start from the broadest on the left (tld) and work your way to the most granular part (the path, query, or fragment of the resource).

dublin 6y ago
In opposition to both the article and the comment above, Usenet (actually uucp) bang-paths are VERY different from domain names, in that they don't represent any kind of organizational (in this case, naming) hierarchy at all, but rather a source-routed path of how to get there. For instance, a uucp email address might look like: well-known-host!next-host!third-host!fourth-host!mailhost!username (another syntax for the last 2 nodes above might be username@mailhost, depending - this became popular later on...) Although this might work just as well: well-known-host!other-host!mailserverhost!username Note that each hostname in such an address is a short, local hostname, not an FQDN. As shown, the first host was usually a "well-known" host in the uucp world, something like say, ucbvax. While uucp addresses were sometimes rewritten (some intermediate hosts tended to get hammered, and remember, this was back when bits weren't free), this was frowned upon for obvious reasons.
lacrimacida 6y ago
Makes more sense but we’d have too many urls starting with com; it would be a bit of a cognitive waste. When the rotaty phone was around more important areas were startig with low digits to save on dialing time. Perhaps a similar type of consideration was used for the current form of urls
- kovek 6y ago
  Why is it an issue to have too many urls starting with com? We type those at the end anyway
  - DarthGhandi 6y ago
    Much prefer the first letter I type into a browser bar be one in 26 letters, not 3 at best for most of the internet. Would make random tld's in oppressive countries somehow even more desirable than they already are. It's a silly idea in the age of url suggestions. I can reach most things I want on the internet with 2 key presses. Everything common in one. N: Hacker News C: Cloud Console M: Gmail R: Reddit X: Well you get the idea
    - corytheboyd 6y ago
      In this hypothetical where the host name starts with the TLD, I think you could assume browsers would change the way this works, because it is obviously broken lol
  - indentit 6y ago
    I thought we just press Ctrl+Enter so we don't have to type `.com`. It would feel weird to have that fill in a prefix instead of a suffix, as one's text caret is typically at the end of what you typed so its cognitively similar to performing an insert than an append currently...
zzo38computer 6y ago
It might be. Many things that use domain names do reverse them. See [0] and [1] for some examples. For many systems, reversing domain names is better, so that is presumably why they do it, because it makes more sense to do it that way for those systems. (It might also help when indexing anything related to domain names; you will want the broadest part first, so that when you search by prefix, you will find anything in that domain and its subdomains.) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_domain_name_notation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_domain_name_notation [1] (My own "Unusenet" specification also uses reverse domain names in NNTP newsgroup names; they specify where the newsgroup originated (not necessarily the same server you are accessing them from), and are used to avoid namespace collisions.)
- pmachinery 6y ago
  What is "Unusenet" supposed to be? All I can find by searching is you casually referring to it here on HN[0], on Wikipedia[1], and on Usenet[2], as if it's actually a thing. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21849200 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21849200 | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22040140 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22040140 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Comparison_of_Usenet_newsreaders https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Comparison_of_Usenet_news... [2] http://al.howardknight.net/?ID=160223384800 http://al.howardknight.net/?ID=160223384800
  - r3dk1ng 6y ago
    gopher://zzo38computer.org/0textfile/miscellaneous/unusenet (copied that gopher link's contents into a pastebin) https://pastebin.com/raw/qJhSKGyv https://pastebin.com/raw/qJhSKGyv
    - pmachinery 6y ago
      Thanks. Interesting, though I'm not exactly sure what problem it's solving or what improvement it's making to Usenet.
      - 6y ago
dn3500 6y ago
At the time the DNS was being designed, there was some discussion of this, and at least one person was outraged we were doing it the "wrong way." I don't remember the arguments. I think it had something to do with putting the least significant component first being considered more natural. DNS came along a couple years after Usenet switched from a flat to heirarchical name space.

by anw 6y ago

dublin 6y ago

In opposition to both the article and the comment above, Usenet (actually uucp) bang-paths are VERY different from domain names, in that they don't represent any kind of organizational (in this case, naming) hierarchy at all, but rather a source-routed path of how to get there. For instance, a uucp email address might look like: well-known-host!next-host!third-host!fourth-host!mailhost!username (another syntax for the last 2 nodes above might be username@mailhost, depending - this became popular later on...) Although this might work just as well: well-known-host!other-host!mailserverhost!username Note that each hostname in such an address is a short, local hostname, not an FQDN. As shown, the first host was usually a "well-known" host in the uucp world, something like say, ucbvax. While uucp addresses were sometimes rewritten (some intermediate hosts tended to get hammered, and remember, this was back when bits weren't free), this was frowned upon for obvious reasons.

lacrimacida 6y ago

Makes more sense but we’d have too many urls starting with com; it would be a bit of a cognitive waste. When the rotaty phone was around more important areas were startig with low digits to save on dialing time. Perhaps a similar type of consideration was used for the current form of urls

kovek 6y ago
Why is it an issue to have too many urls starting with com? We type those at the end anyway
- DarthGhandi 6y ago
  Much prefer the first letter I type into a browser bar be one in 26 letters, not 3 at best for most of the internet. Would make random tld's in oppressive countries somehow even more desirable than they already are. It's a silly idea in the age of url suggestions. I can reach most things I want on the internet with 2 key presses. Everything common in one. N: Hacker News C: Cloud Console M: Gmail R: Reddit X: Well you get the idea
  - corytheboyd 6y ago
    In this hypothetical where the host name starts with the TLD, I think you could assume browsers would change the way this works, because it is obviously broken lol
- indentit 6y ago
  I thought we just press Ctrl+Enter so we don't have to type `.com`. It would feel weird to have that fill in a prefix instead of a suffix, as one's text caret is typically at the end of what you typed so its cognitively similar to performing an insert than an append currently...

zzo38computer 6y ago

It might be. Many things that use domain names do reverse them. See [0] and [1] for some examples. For many systems, reversing domain names is better, so that is presumably why they do it, because it makes more sense to do it that way for those systems. (It might also help when indexing anything related to domain names; you will want the broadest part first, so that when you search by prefix, you will find anything in that domain and its subdomains.) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_domain_name_notation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_domain_name_notation [1] (My own "Unusenet" specification also uses reverse domain names in NNTP newsgroup names; they specify where the newsgroup originated (not necessarily the same server you are accessing them from), and are used to avoid namespace collisions.)

pmachinery 6y ago
What is "Unusenet" supposed to be? All I can find by searching is you casually referring to it here on HN[0], on Wikipedia[1], and on Usenet[2], as if it's actually a thing. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21849200 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21849200 | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22040140 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22040140 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Comparison_of_Usenet_newsreaders https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Comparison_of_Usenet_news... [2] http://al.howardknight.net/?ID=160223384800 http://al.howardknight.net/?ID=160223384800
- r3dk1ng 6y ago
  gopher://zzo38computer.org/0textfile/miscellaneous/unusenet (copied that gopher link's contents into a pastebin) https://pastebin.com/raw/qJhSKGyv https://pastebin.com/raw/qJhSKGyv
  - pmachinery 6y ago
    Thanks. Interesting, though I'm not exactly sure what problem it's solving or what improvement it's making to Usenet.
    - 6y ago

dn3500 6y ago

At the time the DNS was being designed, there was some discussion of this, and at least one person was outraged we were doing it the "wrong way." I don't remember the arguments. I think it had something to do with putting the least significant component first being considered more natural. DNS came along a couple years after Usenet switched from a flat to heirarchical name space.