Message-Id: <3.0.32.20000221220332.01705a94@odie.av8.com> Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 22:20:05 -0500 To: "D. J. Bernstein" , namedroppers@internic.net From: Dean Anderson Subject: Re: a.dns.int Actually, I think many people use dash-separated IP numbers to 'anonymize' names. I don't see why this shouldn't be documented as a BCP. This requires no changes to the protocol. I think the issue with MX records is somewhat orthoganal, or at least could be solved independently. There isn't a format issue, really, and it currently works because most resolvers will work if given an IP address in dotted decimal form instead of a hostname. I don't remember if this is required behavior or not, but I don't see the downside of making it required in the resolver, and changing the specification for the MX to allow dotted decimal IP addresses or hostnames. --Dean Around 07:54 PM 2/20/2000 -0000, rumor has it that D. J. Bernstein said: >Let me add some practical comments. > >Thousands of system administrators are _already_ using dotted-decimal >domain names in MX records. My MTA, like sendmail, supports these names. > >My DNS cache now supports dotted-decimal domain names. This provides an >immediate benefit for other MTAs. > >It's reasonably clear what will happen to this protocol in the future. >System administrators will continue to use dotted-decimal domain names. >There will be occasional failures from other MTAs running under other >DNS caches; the MTA implementors and the DNS implementors will react by >adding support. Eventually, no matter what DNSEXT does, dotted-decimal >domain names will be a de facto standard. > >DNSEXT can reduce the number of failures by documenting this situation, >and by delegating some TLDs to the servers that I described. > >The only remaining problem will be the (many) versions of BIND that >destroy dotted-decimal domain names. I'm willing to add one line of code >to support a.dns.int for BIND's benefit; this won't eliminate the >problem but it will provide an easy workaround. > >---Dan > > >to unsubscribe send a message to namedroppers-request@ops.ietf.org with >the word 'unsubscribe' in a single line as the message text body. > > ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Plain Aviation, Inc dean@av8.com LAN/WAN/UNIX/NT/TCPIP http://www.av8.com ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++