Were A record domain names ever limited to 23 characters?

Fri Sep 30 22:20:36 UTC 2011

Found a decent starting reference. It was a Network solutions limit... I
*knew* it! LOL
http://www.123-domain-register.com/longdomainnames.htm

The domain in question was inspectorgadgetthemovie.com 27 characters long
including the .tld. I was off by one, the limit was 22 characters for the A
record name and 4 characters for .com, .net, .org, .gov and .edu.

>From the 123-domain-register web page:

> The word is out... and the experts have been taking advantage of a change
> in Domain Name regulations that allows up to 67 characters in domain names.
>
> How this will impact you:
>
>    -
>
>    Long domain names filled with keywords can get you ranked higher on the
>    search engines. (yes, the search engines will rank them)
>
>    -
>
>    For those who could not get a DOT.COM domain name, or were limited by
>    the 22 character limit, those days are over...for awhile anyway.
>
>    -
>
>    This revolution is driven by entrepreneurs who can act quickly. If you
>    do not act soon, all the good domains will be gone, and you will have to pay
>    premiums you do not want to in order get the domain name you want.
>
> Since 1993, Network Solutions has registered more than 3.4 million domain
> names -- all limited to 26 characters. Now that their exclusive government
> contract is ending, competitors have tossed this artificial limit and are
> allowing longer names.
>
Cool, I was not dreaming... ;-]
--steve

On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 15:00, <bmanning at vacation.karoshi.com> wrote:

> 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
>

-- 
steve pirk
refiamerica.org
"father... the sleeper has awakened..." paul atreides - dune
kexp.org member august '09