Withdrawal of info.cern.ch

Withdrawal of info.cern.ch
==========================

[Message written two weeks ago but delayed by email list problems]

The responsibility for the basic WWW software and environment
now belongs to the World-Wide Web Consortium and no longer to
CERN. The default servers are now physically located at MIT
and are logically within the "w3.org" namespace.

For this reason, continued use of the old default server name
"info.cern.ch" is inappropriate and all references to
this name must be progressively replaced by "www.w3.org".

Most of the old servers at CERN had to be switched off
recently, and the undersigned did not agree to an alias
being permanently installed in CERN's name server. We attempted
from late May to provide an automatic warning and redirection
whenever users access a page on the "info.cern.ch" server
at CERN. This has proved to be less transparent and more
troublesome than we hoped. Nevertheless, the number of accesses
to "info.cern.ch" has already fallen by 70%. We hope that the
worst is over.

Forcing the replacement of the geographical reference
in "info.cern.ch" by the purely logical name "www.w3.org"
should prevent this problem ever arising again in an ever-growing
Web. We hope that the pain caused now will avoid much greater
pain later.

All the same, I apologise for the inconvenience this change has
caused to many people, and for any multiple copies of this
message you may receive.

    Brian Carpenter
    Group Leader in the Computing and Networks Division of CERN
    (brian@dxcoms.cern.ch)

Received on Friday, 23 June 1995 02:21:47 UTC