ICANN to allow commercial gTLDs

Mon Jun 20 21:45:41 UTC 2011

In message <20110620190517.2242.qmail at joyce.lan>, "John Levine" writes:
> >>     Simple hostnames as, global identifiers, were supposed to cease
> >>     to work in 1984.
> >>     
> >> Can you point out where that is stated?
> >> 
> >> 	jaap
> >
> >RFC 897.
> 
> I see where it says that all of the hosts that existed in 1984 were
> supposed to change their names to something with at least two
> components, as part of the transition to the DNS.  I think we can
> assume that process is now complete.
> 
> I don't see where it says that new DNS names can't have a single
> component.  A page and line reference would be helpful.

Heirachical names have 2 or more labels or else they become simple
names (one label).  They are dis-joint sets.

Then you hace RFC 1123 which explictly acknowledges the use of
unqualified names.  Simple names are indistingishable from unqualified
names and unqualified names need to be qualified and the only
syntaxically valid way to do that is to add a label.

                   Although RFC-822 allows the local use of abbreviated
                   domain names within a domain, the application of
                   RFC-822 in Internet mail does not allow this.  The
                   intent is that an Internet host must not send an SMTP
                   message header containing an abbreviated domain name
                   in an address field.  This allows the address fields
                   of the header to be passed without alteration across
                   the Internet, as required in Section 5.2.6.

Then you have SUBMISSION, RFC 4409 section 4.2., Ensure All Domains
Are Fully-Qualified.  This allows simple names on input and says
to qualify them.  

Or do you want more examples of where the use of simple names as
global identifiers will cause things to break.

Allowing or using address and MX records at the apex of a TLD is
stupid, reckless behaviour.  Configuring a TLD to behave as if it
is a simple host names is stupid, reckless behaviour, i.e.  be
careful about which SRV records you add.  Some are used with host
names equivalents as suffixes and some arn't.

Mark
-- 
Mark Andrews, ISC
1 Seymour St., Dundas Valley, NSW 2117, Australia
PHONE: +61 2 9871 4742                 INTERNET: marka at isc.org