Physical Location TLDs

[Meredith Poor <mnpoor@txdirect.net>]

The present TLD system follows the registered owner, without much
concern for where they are located.  This is considered desirable since
domain owners aren't glued to one spot.

Buildings and related structures (bridges, antennas, etc.) have or will
soon have need for their own domain names, when such structures are
hosts to real time data acquisition and control.  Buildings need domains
that are are tied to their physical address, regardless of the name of
the building or the tenant.  Buildings have, in many cases, monitoring
that now occurs over the web, such as for meter reading, security,
access control, and remote management.

If the most general TLD is presented last (i.e., 'www.xyz.com.us'), then
this would suggest that addresses should be
organized in reverse of normal heirarchy.  For a house on a street in
the US, this organization might be
'www.n151.centerst.12129.loc.us', where the n151 is the house number and
12129 is the Zip Code.  An address in Canada might appear as
'www.n300.yonge.m1z4k3.loc.ca', given that the Canadian postal code is
in the 'ananan' format.

The reason for separating the URL of the building from that of the
tenant is that there may not be a tenant, or that there may be multiple
variable tenants in various suites.  In many cases a building's
ownership is diffuse.  This domain naming scheme would make it possible
for the power company to read the meter without concern for who was
there at the time; the utility company's computer would be responsible
for associating the bill with the URL of the current owner or property
manager.

In certain cases building subdivisions are appropriate, such as an
apartment complex with multiple buildings.  Variations are:

'www.n151.centerst.b9.12129.loc.us' for building nine in an apartment
complex.
'www.n151.centerst.g.12129.loc.us' where a garage apartment is separate
from a house and is not otherwise distinct.
'www.n151a.centerst.12129.loc.us' where there is a duplex, but the
street addresses are distinct.
'www.b44.rr21.12129.loc.us' where a boxholder 44 lives on rual route 21.

These assignments would be made by county or municipal agencies, similar
to the way house numbers are assigned, so that owners do not confuse
service providers with their creativity.  Any service operating on the
building as opposed to the tenants would use the preassigned URL.

In general, it would be a good idea for residents not to publicly
associate their personal or business domains with their corresponding
house domains, since this would create substantial opportunity to
violate privacy.