Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

> Me, I kinda wish we wrote URLs as http://com.example.host.invalid/path/to/resource.

The UK's predecessor to the DNS worked this way (a "big endian" hierarchy). Sorry I can't remember the network name; if I remember it was rooted in gb.




I am old enough to remember the final year of JANET with the backwards addresses.

At the time I was at Plymouth Marine Laboratory with a university email address of the type researcher@uk.ac.pml - i.e. backwards. However, in those days there were many different things about networks, you could have several connector types in a room so anything beyond email was a bit like the difference between travelling across state borders in the U.S. and travelling across the Iron Curtain. I can't remember how one got from one's VT terminal to the wider internet on VAX/VMS but that was possible. FTP and some Telnet was how it worked, none of this www stuff.

The change of address structure to normal internet style was not that big of a change, you would think it would have been as traumatic as changing what side of the road to drive on or the Millennium Bug, but, the change happened with no huge amount of work needed or resultant disruption.


I am old enough to have been a JANET site administrator.

The JANET when I used it ran over a private X.25 network with a few gateways to BT's public X.25 network. There was a gateway to the internet at University of London Computer Centre but it only provided an FTP client.


JANET, which routed email to Czechoslovakia, as the legend goes...

Back then mainly the Computer Science departments had email, so they'd have domain names beginning with a cs. in the ARPA scheme, but, since JANET did it backwards, you'd have to rearrange the domain name so it ended with a .cs for that network. If you did that and didn't reverse it back, the domain name would have a ccTLD of .cs, which is what Czechoslovakia used.

(The .cs ccTLD existed until 1995, years after Czechoslovakia ceased to. The .su ccTLD (Soviet Union) still exists.)




Consider applying for YC's Spring batch! Applications are open till Feb 11.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: