On Sun, 5 Sep 2004 terry(_at_)ashtonwoodshomes(_dot_)com wrote:
I voted against a prefix.
I did this not just because of the "_" character support issue, but
also because:
-implementing a prefix adds complexity (comprehension complexity if
nothing else)
You know, if a person went through SPF protocol draft and understood
the syntax and how these records work, I would imagine same person could
take 2 more seconds to understand about prefix placement of the record...
-many dns providers do not support users adding subdomains
(or not through the UI anyway)
These are not truly subdomains, prefix is more like a host record for specific
domain. And actually if you place records at the root of the domain, its
more GUI that will not let you do it (or make it difficult to do it) as
many programs will not let you add records with empty host record.
-prefix does not solve the wildcard issue
Actually prefix helps wildcard issues and solves at least one of them.
It allows to avoid necessity to enter separate records for both "example,com"
and for "*.example.com" while with prefix one record for "*.example.com"
would suffice and cover both _prefix.example.com and anything else like
_prefix.subdonain.example.com.
The rest of wildcard issues are the same no matter if prefix is used or
not but. But having solved at least one wildcard issue does mean that use
of prefix is preferable when considering wildcards.
-one can use redirect in a small record to a subdomain (simulating
prefix) if one really wants prefix
Which dies not completely avoids collision with other records while
requirying multiple dns lookups.
Anything that hinders deployment needs to be considered for benefit and
lack of alternatives.
Ok, then I have the following objection:
We should stop working on MARID and SPF completely because they use dns
TXT records and entering TXT records is not supported by large number of
GUI dns configuation tools and not supported by majority of registrars
that offer dns service hosting directly to end-users.
P.S. If you do a comparision, you may find that there are more GUI dns
systems that don't support TXT then there are those that don't support
"_" in the host name. At the same time you may actually find that majority
of DNS GUI systems that have one of these problems have the other one too.
--
William Leibzon
Elan Networks
william(_at_)elan(_dot_)net