Subject: draft-zigmond-tv-url-02.txt

From: "Shaw, Robert" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1999 11:16:08 +0200

I'll run this by a few folks in the Radiocommunication Sector 
here but in a quick read this looks like a very simplistic
solution to a much more complex global namespace problem.

First, what is the relationship of this work with the work 
going on in http://www.w3.org/TV/? It looks like they've done 
a requirements doc at http://www.w3.org/TV/TVWeb/TVWeb-URI-Requirements.html
and this draft seems to be one of several proposals (and it
doesn't seem to synch with the requirements doc).

Section 3.2 refers to "International Communications 
Union" which should be "International Telecommunication Union".
The footnote needs to drop the 's' too.

Call signs are a unique global name space. Network identifiers 
are not and Section 3.3 notes "that a flat namespace is a 
serious problem going forward" so reserves "hierarchical forms"
for future specifications. However, the URI scheme already 
presupposes this hierarchical structure "base" scheme through 
defined use of network-ids which it already points out in 3.5 
is broken through either shared names (the ABC example) or 
additional network id streams (and I doubt this is a full 
enumeration of the problem space).

Finally, I've seen no discussion of potential namespace collision 
between call signs and network ids. ITU allocates the first 3 letters
of call signs while national bodies (e.g., FCC) may extend that. 
As an example, HBA-HBZ is allocated to Switzerland. Could a Swiss
call sign allocation collide with a North American network id 
(e.g. HBO)? I don't know but it looks like it needs discussion.

Bob
--
Robert Shaw <[email-masked]>
ITU Internet Strategy and Policy Advisor
International Telecommunication Union <http://www.itu.int>
Place des Nations, 1211 Geneva, Switzerland

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From: Alan Barrett <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1999 18:48:49 +0200 (SAST)

I thought we had a convention that, if an URL contains a
double slash after the colon, then it should follow the
"Common Internet Name Syntax" (RFC 1738 section 3.1).

tv://nbc/2 would violate this, because "nbc" is not a hostname.

--apb (Alan Barrett)

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From: Jeremy <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1999 14:25:56 -0400 (EDT)

Its a 56 K to EIA point to point..

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From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1999 15:24:00 -0500

> tv://nbc/2 would violate this, because "nbc" is not a hostname.

If it isn't, we can easily fix that:-)

But we don't need to; nslookup says:

Name:    nbc.com
Address:  209.143.225.100

So indeed this is pretty broken as it stands.

  Brian