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Re: Dotless domains

2009-01-24 21:30:20


On Jan 24, 2009, at 6:01 PM, John C Klensin wrote:




--On Sunday, January 25, 2009 12:30 +1100 Mark Andrews
<Mark_Andrews(_at_)isc(_dot_)org> wrote:

        Dotless hostnames are in the local namespace and can *never*
        be made to work *reliably* in a global context.

        Note the use of non-heirachical names is undoing the changes
        introduced by RFC 921 and will introduce problems RFC 921
        was trying to remove/prevent.

Yeah.  Since I have not been able to find a single hint in
ICANN's new TLD plans that those TLDs would be restricted to
delegation-only uses, tell it to ICANN.  Or tell it to whomever
is supposed to be supplying adult supervision to ICANN  :-(

Not an SMTP problem.  SMTP requires FQDNs, without exception,
and does not permit single-component ones.

5321 explicitly says otherwise ("A domain name (or often just a "domain") consists of one or more components, separated by dots if more than one appears. In the case of a top-level domain used by itself in an email address, a single string is used without any dots.").

The whole point of this thread is to dig a little deeper into why that decision was made and what the implications are, I think.

Cheers,
  Steve

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