network name 101100010100110.net

Mon Oct 18 02:40:21 UTC 2010

On Sun, Oct 17, 2010 at 09:16:04PM -0500, James Hess wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 16, 2010 at 11:46 PM, Day Domes <daydomes at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I have been tasked with coming up with a new name for are transit data
> > network.  I am thinking of using 101100010100110.net does anyone see
> > any issues with this?
> 
> The domain-name starts with a digit, which is not really recommended,  RFC 1034,
> due to the fact a valid actual hostname  cannot start with a digit,
> and, for example,
> some MTAs/MUAs,  that comply with earlier versions of standards still in use,
> will possibly have a problem  sending e-mail to the flat domain, even
> if the actual hostname is
> something legal such as mail.101100010100110.net.


	if there is code that old still out there, it desrves to die.
	the leading character restriction was lifted when the company
	3com was created.  its been nearly 18 years since that advice
	held true.


> 
> Which goes back to one of the standard-provided definitions of domain
> name syntax used by RFC 821 page 29:
> 
> <domain> ::=  <element> | <element> "." <domain>
> <element> ::= <name> | "#" <number> | "[" <dotnum> "]"
> <mailbox> ::= <local-part> "@" <domain>
> ...
> <name> ::= <a> <ldh-str> <let-dig>
> ...
> <a> ::= any one of the 52 alphabetic characters A through Z
>             in upper case and a through z in lower case
> <d> ::= any one of the ten digits 0 through 9


	at least three times in the past decade, the issues of RFC 821 
	vs Domain lables has come up on the DNSEXT mailing list in the
	IETF (or its predacessor).   RFC 821 hostnames are not the 
	convention for Domain Labels, esp as we enter the age of 
	Non-Ascii labels.

	That said, the world was much simpler last century.

--bill

> -- 
> -Jh
>