On Oct 23, 2011, at 2:39 AM, Matthew Pounsett wrote:

> 
> On 2011/10/22, at 15:21, Keith Moore wrote:
> 
>> 
>> On Oct 22, 2011, at 2:42 PM, Doug Barton wrote:
>> 
>>> 1. I think we're all in agreement that dot-terminated names (e.g.,
>>> example.) should not be subject to search lists. I personally don't have
>>> any problems with any document mentioning that this is the expected
>>> behavior.
>> 
>> agree.  however there are standard protocols for which a trailing dot in a 
>> domain name is a syntax error.
> 
> Any protocol that makes a standard FQDN a syntax error is itself in error.  
> Not to say that these don't exist, but if people are writing protocols that 
> can't deal with a properly formatted FQDN they need to stop.  Now.

Per RFC 952, a standard FQDN does not contain a trailing dot.   Neither do 
email addresses nor domains in URLs.    Changing that set of embedded practices 
is much more difficult than changing the expectations of the relative few who 
currently expect names with dots to be subject to search lists.

>> Strongly disagree.  That would leave users without a protocol-independent 
>> way of unambiguously specifying "this is a fully-qualified domain name".
>> 
>> The practice of applying search lists to names with "."s in them needs to 
>> die.
> 
> I can't agree with this statement.  As others have said, the practice of 
> using a search list to allow 'ssh foo.bar' to reach 'foo.bar.example.com' 
> isn't going anywhere, and there are a lot of people that make extensive use 
> of the convenience.

It needs to die because it's fundamentally broken.   Vanity TLDs will only make 
it worse.   I understand that there are sites that use it and people who are 
accustomed to it.   I don't pretend that we can stop them.   We can, however, 
explain the negative consequences of doing this (some of which might be 
specific to systems with multiple interfaces), and recommend that they 
transition away from that practice.   And recommendations for systems with 
multiple interfaces can be chosen in such a way as to allow search lists to 
break even more.

Keith

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