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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Rahul Dhesi)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip.domains
Subject: Re: NSI may revoke 100's of domains
Date: 14 Jan 2000 09:48:36 GMT
Organization: a2i network
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In <85mck0$[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Mark Andrews) writes:
>>>>The words 'cname' and 'alias' nowhere appear in RFC 952.
>>
>>>Correct, but the word "nickname" does. Same function.
>>
>>Well, maybe. But in any case, RFC 2181 supersedes RFC 952. And RFC 2181
>>says:
> RFC 2181 does NOT supersede RFC 952. The paragraph below applies
> to DOMAINNAMES. HOSTNAMES, which are a subset of DOMAINNAMES, are
> still restricted by RFC 952 & RFC 1123.
Host names are, but host aliases, defined via CNAME records, are not.
In support my this I hereby quote yet another RFC, this time the "best
current practice" RFC 2317:
$ORIGIN 2.0.192.in-addr.arpa.
129 CNAME 129.128/26
Some DNS implementations are not kind to special characters in domain
names, e.g. the "/" used in the above examples. As [3] makes clear,
these are legal, though some might feel unsightly. BECAUSE THESE ARE
NOT HOST NAMES THE RESTRICTION OF [2] DOES NOT APPLY. Modern clients
and servers have an option to act in the LIBERAL AND CORRECT FASHION.
The examples here use "/" because it was felt to be more visible and
PEDANTIC REVIEWERS FELT THAT THE 'THESE ARE NOT HOSTNAMES' ARGUMENT
NEEDED TO BE REPEATED. We advise you not to be so pedantic, and to
not precisely copy the above examples, e.g. substitute a more
conservative character, such as hyphen, for "/".
I have added emphases in three places. The use of '/' in aliases
defined by CNAME records is 'correct'. A host alias defined by a CNAME
record is not a host name and not constrained by restrictions imposed on
host names. The same RFC also advises, of course, that we use a hyphen
instead, because not all software will properly handle slashes. But not
because any RFC requires it.
QED, EOP, EOD, Y2K.
--
Rahul Dhesi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
See my UUNET spam mini-faq at:
http://www.rahul.net/dhesi/uunet.faq.txt
