Re: A philosophical question about large directory structures

Date sent:      	Tue, 22 Jun 1999 15:04:33 +0200
To:             	[email protected]
From:           	Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email protected]>
Subject:        	A philosophical question about large directory structures

> I still wonder:
> It seems that there's a basic assumption that an integrated, world-wide
> directory will occur at some time, but not this year.
> 
> My feeling is that it won't happen until someone creates it, and nobody
> will create it until someone wants to pay for it. Up front.

I dont think this is the main point. I agree with Erik that the main 
thing is that there should be a global directory namespace. Then 
there will be spontaneous directory connections between 
organisations who do business together. And there will be thousands 
of these, coming and going all the time. But when you set up your 
directory island initially, you do not know who you might want to 
connect to in the future. But  if you grab a piece of the global 
namespace when you set up your directory then you can be 
assured of seamlessly connecting to whoever you want to whenever 
you want to in the future (providing they have also grabbed a global 
name). Its really just the same old argument again of when I set up 
my private Intranet do I pick my own IP addresses at will, or do I get 
ones from the global set, even though I dont want to connect to the 
Internet today. Many a fool has chosen the former route and 
regretted years later. (and believe me some people are still doing the 
same thing today)

David

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David Chadwick
IT Institute, University of Salford, Salford M5 4WT
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