[PLUG] What is in a Name Server??

Ed Sawicki ed at alcpress.com
Mon Jun 18 18:11:51 UTC 2007


Michael Rasmussen wrote:
> drew wymore wrote:
>> Nope doesn't matter although you can't use underscrores, only dots or
>> periods.
> 
> Not true, kinda.  Legal characters for a host names are ASCII letters, digits and
> the dash character. His ns1_server is not legal but the ns1-server construct would
> be.
> 
> See http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1123.txt and
> http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc952.txt


There's at least one DNS-related RFCs (I've forgotten
which one) that says "any binary pattern" is allowable
in a DNS name part but, other than Microsoft, nobody
supports this in DNS software. Even the IDNA
(Internationalized domain names) folks use algorithms
that use punycode to ensure that name parts use only
letters, numbers, and the hyphen (dash). Still, it's
possible for people to claim, as Microsoft apparently
does, that any characters are possible in name parts.

Ed Sawicki



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