Subject: RE: Question on ECML address country code usage

From: Eastlake III Donald-LDE008 <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2002 12:30:51 -0400

No, the United States of America is one "national" jurisdiction. It permits
a vast profusion (well over 550) of subsidiary jurisdictions (cities,
counties, states, indian areas, special districts, free-ports, gores, etc.)
within it each of which is limited to the amount of individuality that is
permitted them by the USA. Furthermore, the use of ISO3166 codes is a way of
avoid any burden on the IETF of deciding what is a country and its use is
long established in the DNS and in other protocols, IETF and non-IETF.

And, perhaps most important of all, it is well defined and interoperable.

It seems to me that the way to go is ISO3166 country codes with a
supplementary "additional jurisdictional information" field to be used when
you need to specify more than the ISO country code plus the address
information.

Donald

-----Original Message-----
From: Eric Brunner-Williams in Portland Maine
[mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Thursday, August 22, 2002 6:54 AM
To: [email-masked]
Cc: [email-masked]; [email-masked]
Subject: Re: Question on ECML address country code usage

Lauri,

There are about 550 national jurisdictions contained in, or surrounded by,
the United States. ISO 3166 (aka "country codes") provides few code points
for distinguishing code points in North America.

As a protocol design issue, using two octets to contain fewer than 300
distinct data values, and mandating failure, or implementation-specific
extension, for transactions taking place within the jurisdictions of Indian
(not India) governments (but not Pitcairn's Island or any of the other odd
bits in ISO 3166), is both untidy and an overspecification.

We aren't in the buisness of deciding what is a state.

We don't need to pay a great deal of attention to the claims of others who
are in that business. Very likely, their decisions are political, and not
technical, and of necessity, not correct.

It is a good thing that iso3166 code points aren't used in ip addrs. If they
were, even getting address allocations for Indian Country would be
difficult.

Eric

---

From: Eric Brunner-Williams in Portland Maine <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2002 13:52:38 -0400

Donald,

You and I (and Bill) wrote the IANA considerations for the DNS, and inspite
of your initial attachment to iso3166, there was no technical necessity in
that BCP to cite iso3166.

What is the compelling necessity here?

Eric

---

From: Donald Eastlake 3rd <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2002 14:59:21 -0400 (EDT)

(1) ECML is supposed to support a variety of existing financial
protocols used on existing networks. As far as I know, all of them that
need any jurisdictional information include the country code (commonly
in the form on the UN country number which is equivalent). This alone is
sufficient justification for including ISO country code, keeping in mind
that all fields in ECML are optional and can be used or not as the
participants choose.

(2) ISO 3166 is a well defined standard which anyone can consult and
will therefore interpert the same way. I.E., it is interoperable, the
major goal of IETF protocols. Poking holes in it without specifying an
interoperable replacement seems pretty insignificant to me. This reason
alone is sufficient justification to include ISO country code as an
optional jurisdiction related field.

Donald

PS: I'm about to leave for vacation returning 1 Sept. so will probably 
not be very responsive between now and then.

On Thu, 22 Aug 2002, Eric Brunner-Williams in Portland Maine wrote:

> Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2002 13:52:38 -0400
> From: Eric Brunner-Williams in Portland Maine <[email-masked]>
> To: Eastlake III Donald-LDE008 <[email-masked]>
> Cc: [email-masked], [email-masked]

-- 
======================================================================
 Donald E. Eastlake 3rd                       [email-masked]
 155 Beaver Street              +1-508-634-2066(h) +1-508-851-8280(w)
 Milford, MA 01757 USA                   [email-masked]

---

From: Eric Brunner-Williams in Portland Maine <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2002 15:25:07 -0400

> ... existing financial protocols ...
 
I must have missed that in the charter.

You've got my objection.

Eric