Postel's country code list

Mark Kuharich (mark@is2inc.com)
Mon, 22 Nov 1999 09:30:40 -0800


I'm trying to track down the List that Jon Postel used to designate
geographic country codes for top level domain names.

Does the International Signage Organization really exist or is it really
the International Standards Organization? Does the ISO Document 3156
really exist? Does anyone have a URL to this or any equivalent document?
If you don't have a URL, pointers to any other resources are fine.

Professor Farber, would you mind querying the IP list?

What are some examples of top-level domain names? ".com", ".edu", and
".org" are some example top-level domain names. But geographic country
codes like France (".fr") and Germany (".de") are also some examples.
How did Postel come up with that list? He was accidently very clever a
long time ago. What if someone wanted to use their geographic country
as a top-level domain name? Well, it turns out that there's a list
maintained by the ISO, the International Signage Organization, of
two-letter codes for geographic countries. Postel decided to use the
two-letter codes from the ISO Document 3156 list for geographic country
codes.

Thanks in advance for your help,
Mark Kuharich

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