Were A record domain names ever limited to 23 characters?

Fri Sep 30 22:00:36 UTC 2011

On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 02:54:38PM -0700, steve pirk [egrep] wrote:
> I seem to recollect back the 1999 or 2000 times that I was unable to
> register a domain name that was 24 characters long. Shortly after that, I
> heard that the character limit had been increased to like 128 characters,
> and we were able to register the name.
> 
> Can anyone offer some input, or is this a memory of a bad dream?
> ;-]
> 
> -- Steve Pirk
> Yensid

the foundational DNS spec sez:

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1035.txt

2.3.1
[elided]
There are also some restrictions on the length.  Labels must be 63 characters or less.

/bill