Underscores in host names

Wed May 18 15:58:43 UTC 2005

David Conrad wrote:

> I used to be in the 952/1123 sect, but I have since reformed and  
> continue to do penance for my sins.

Your personal pendulum has no bearing on the relevance on 952/1123.
Hostnames still have their own rules, apart from the media used to
represent those hostnames (eg, hosts or DNS is irrelevant--a hostname is
still a hostname is still a hostname).

> The "hostname is not a domain name" dodge is simply wrong.  If you  
> like, I can get a signed affadavit from the author of the DNS  
> specifications (assuming he's in the office tomorrow) to the effect  
> that it was always his intent that domain names be composed of any 8- 
> bit value.

There's absolutely no corrolation between those two points. Or at least,
the latter point has nothing to do with the former.

As for the latter point in particular, anybody is perfectly free to use
any 8-bit value they want for any label in any domain name, and that point
is hardly in dispute. The point for this thread however, is that 952/1123
defines its own rules for the syntax that can be used to represent a
connection target on the Internet (aka "hosts"). Those rules are quite
clear: letters, digits and hyphen only, length restrictions, etc.

> However, that rant was mostly irrelevant.  Can you point to _ANY_  
> application, operating system, or anything else that has any issues  
> whatsoever with an "_" of all characters?

Just one?

Squid.

-- 
Eric A. Hall                                        http://www.ehsco.com/
Internet Core Protocols          http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/coreprot/