Re: Question on ECML address country code usage

[Eric Brunner-Williams in Portland Maine <brunner@nic-naa.net>]

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