"Her name was McGill,
she called herself Lil,
but everyone knew her as Nancy"
The Beatles, "Rocky Raccoon"
We commonly refer to objects, places, and people by a variety of names, both formal and casual. Names can carry connotations: "Frank" is neutral unless you know someone by that name, while "Frankenstein" brings to mind a very specific object! In the Bay Area "the city" refers to San Francisco but would be quite ambiguous outside of that context. Similarly, the University of California and the names of objects associated with it must be considered carefully as part of managing the University's environments.
Services and individuals accessible via the Internet are most often referred to by "names" rather than numerical network addresses. Over the last 15 years, each division of the university has developed it's own conventions for names of common services. Some of these reflect conventions used broadly across the Internet; others are more idiosyncratic making it difficult for users on one campus to locate common services on another campus. We propose that the university adopt a set of consistent names for common services, possibly as "aliases" for the current names where they differ.
Three classes of names are of interest: "site names" which identify broadly the various major locations of the university, "service names" which identify commonly used information systems or other service machines, and "function addresses" which identify particular offices or activities.
Site names identify major locations of administrative divisions of the
university, for example the Berkeley campus is known as Berkeley.EDU
while the San Diego campus is known as UCSD.EDU. We propose a
formal and consistent site convention be:
A related issue and concern is the current propensity for "capturing" Internet domain names and then offering to "sell" them to the relevant institution or, worse, misusing them. This has not occurred yet to our knowledge with respect to UC but there is at least one incidence of a questionable registration: UCBerkeley.COM is registered to an individual in Torrance, California. In order to prevent this sort of problem, the Office of the President has initiated registration of all relevant UC site names on behalf of the campuses.
Where we are now. A complete list of academic UC site names is shown below. We will refer to the particular formal name (e.g. UCIrvine.EDU) as <UCdomain> in the sections below.
Service names are used by software to locate sources of information or other resources. Probably the most widely known and used service name is that referring to the "World Wide Web home page" for each campus. We suggest others be consistently available as well. As a start, standard UC service names might include:
Service Name Refers to...
www.<UCdomain> The official WWW server and Home Page for
the campus.
directory.<UCdomain> (also "ph") The service machine that supports on-line
directory queries, often in a variety of
protocols.
gopher.<UCdomain> ??? (Obsolete?) Gopher based information
services; may be the same as the WWW
service machine.
mail.<UCdomain> (also "smtp" The main email gateway for the campus.
and "popserve") Would be used by external mailers and
campus users with client/server email.
news.<UCdomain> Usenet News server for the campus.
library.<UCdomain> Campus library on-line catalog and
information services.
ntp or nettime.<UCdomain> Time synchronization services for campus
hosts and workstations.
ftp.<UCdomain> General file archive server
dns.<UCdomain>... (also "dns1", To be used to configure campus hosts and
"dns2", etc.) for external query by NICs and NOCs.
Functional addresses are electronic mail addresses that refer not to an individual but to an office or administrative function. All campuses have an electronic mail "postmaster" to respond to questions about email. Other functional names that might be considered include:
Functional Address Purpose...
postmaster@<UCdomain> Campus electronic mail information and problem
resolution.
chancellor@<UCdomain> The Chancellor's office - primarily for public
information or queries.
admissions@<UCdomain> Admissions Office information and queries.
information@<UCdomain> General Public Information. Could be handled
by Public Relations Office.
library@<UCdomain> Campus library queries.
alumni@<UCdomain> The campus Alumni Association
police@<UCdomain> For non-urgent trouble reports, etc.
NOC@<UCdomain> Campus Network Operations group.
NIC@<UCdomain> Campus Network Information office.
Additional functional address might be considered for information technology consulting, instructional technology support, University Development or Relations offices, etc.
The following domain names are held already by UC.
Berkeley.EDU
UCDavis.EDU
UCIrvine.EDU
UCI.EDU
UCLA.EDU
UCR.EDU
UCSD.EDU
UCSF.EDU
UCSB.EDU
UCSC.EDU
UCOP.EDU
The following domain names have been registered with the InterNIC by IR&C on behalf of the university.
Cal.EDU
UCB.EDU
UCBerkeley.COM (currently held for an individual in Torrance, CA)
UCBerkeley.EDU
UCBerkeley.NET
UCBerkeley.ORG
UCD.EDU
UCDavis.COM
UCDavis.NET
UCDavis.ORG
UCIrvine.COM
UCIrvine.NET
UCIrvine.ORG
UCLosAngeles.COM
UCLosAngeles.EDU
UCLosAngeles.NET
UCLosAngeles.ORG
UCRiverside.COM
UCRiverside.EDU
UCRiverside.NET
UCRiverside.ORG
UCSanDiego.COM
UCSanDiego.EDU
UCSanDiego.NET
UCSanDiego.ORG
UCSanFrancisco.COM
UCSanFrancisco.EDU
UCSanFrancisco.NET
UCSanFrancisco.ORG
UCSantaBarbara.COM
UCSantaBarbara.EDU
UCSantaBarbara.NET
UCSantaBarbara.ORG
UCSantaCruz.COM
UCSantaCruz.EDU
UCSantaCruz.NET
UCSantaCruz.ORG
UCOP.ORG
UCOP.NET
Names that may appear to be UC related but are held by other organizations.
Domain Name Held by ...
Berkeley.COM EarthLink, Los Angeles
Berkeley.ORG Berkeley College, NJ
Berkeley.NET Berkeley Unified School District
UCB.COM United Commercial Bank, London
Cal.ORG Quang Pho, Washington, DC
Cal.NET Mother.com, Davis, CA
Cal.COM Computers At Large, San Jose
Davis.COM Mother.com, Davis, CA
Davis.EDU City of Davis School District
Davis.ORG Frontier Systems, Palo Alto
Davis.NET Gizmotronics, Inc., CT
UCD.COM Microcomputer Design, Inc., IL
UCD.NET Mother.com, Davis, CA
Irvine.ORG The James Irvine Foundation, SF
Irvine.COM Irvine Compiler Corp., Irvine
UCI.ORG Universal Catalyst, Inc., Ontario, CA
UCI.NET United Communications, Inc., Bend, OR
UCI.COM Unified Communications, Inc., Minneapolis, MN
LosAngeles.ORG Boys & Girls Club of Los Angeles
LosAngeles.NET Los Angeles Networks
LosAngeles.COM Boulevards New Media, Inc., Los Angeles
UCLA.ORG United Church Leaders Association, NC
UCLA.COM UCLA Corner Cubes, Huntsville, AL
Riverside.ORG Riverside BBS, Spring Lake Park, MN
Riverside.NET Riverside Consulting Group, Atlanta, GA
Riverside.COM Riverside Technology Inc., Ft. Collins, CO
UCR.COM Universal CD-ROM, Sunnyvale, CA
SanDiego.ORG San Diego Convention & Visitors Bureau
SanDiego.NET Infonex, San Diego
SanDiego.COM Data Transfer Group, San Diego
UCSD.COM AJ Wilson, La Jolla, CA
SanFrancisco.ORG TWH San Francisco Org., Riderwood, MD
SanFrancisco.NET San Francisco Bay Networks, Foster City, CA
SanFrancisco.COM Douglas Pundick Technical Writing, Alameda, CA
UCSF.COM Urology Consultants of South Florida, Inc.
SantaBarbara.ORG 3rd Wave Solutions, Santa Barbara
SantaBarbara.NET Lyons Software, Santa Barbara
SantaBarbara.COM Santa Barbara Dot Com, Santa Barbara
UCSB.COM Sherry Linscott, Torrence, CA (see also UCBerkeley.COM
under proposed registrations)
SantaCruz.NET S&S Computer Consulting, Santa Cruz
SantaCruz.COM Santa Cruz Software, Santa Cruz
UCSC.ORG University City Science Center, Philadelphia
UCSC.COM University Computing Services Corp, Newark, DE
UCOP.COM Q-Data Online, Inc., St. Petersburg, FL
OP.ORG Ordo Praedicatorum, Rome, Italy
OP.NET OpNet, Inc., Bryn Mawr, PA
OP.COM Independent Stationers, Indianapolis, IN
UC.EDU University of Cincinnati, OH
UC.ORG Ultimate Consumer, Tuscon, AZ
UC.NET interNATUR Dipl.-Ing Marc Moeller, Germany
UC.COM Unicom, Inc., Pine Brook, NJ
ucal.COM UCA&L, Williamsville, NY