nanog mailing list archives
Re: Were A record domain names ever limited to 23 characters?
From: Jimmy Hess <mysidia () gmail com>
Date: Fri, 7 Oct 2011 18:39:49 -0500
On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 10:32 PM, Joe Hamelin <joe () nethead com> wrote:
I remember tales from when there was an eight character limit. But that was back when you didn't have to pay for them and they assigned you a class-c block automatically. Of course it took six weeks to register because there was only one person running the registry.
You may be referring to a limitation of a certain OS regarding a hostname; or some network's policy. But the DNS protocol itself never had a limit of 8 characters. When we are talking about the contents of "A" record names, I would refer you to http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2181.txt "RFC 2181 Clarifications to the DNS Specification R. Elz, R. Bush [ July 1997 ] (TXT = 36989) (Updates RFC1034, RFC1035, RFC1123) (Updated-By RFC4035, RFC2535, RFC4343, RFC4033, RFC4034, RFC5452) (Status: PROPOSED STANDARD) (Stream: IETF, Area: int, WG: dnsind) " " Elz & Bush Standards Track [Page 12] ... Occasionally it is assumed that the Domain Name System serves only the purpose of mapping Internet host names to data, and mapping Internet addresses to host names. This is not correct, the DNS is a general (if somewhat limited) hierarchical database, and can store almost any kind of data, for almost any purpose. ... 11. Name syntax " The length of any one label is limited to between 1 and 63 octets. A full domain name is limited to 255 octets (including the separators). The zero length full name is defined as representing the root of the DNS tree, and is typically written and displayed as ".". Those restrictions aside, any binary string whatever can be used as the label of any resource record. " -- -JH
Current thread:
- Re: Were A record domain names ever limited to 23 characters? Lamar Owen (Oct 07)
- Re: Were A record domain names ever limited to 23 characters? steve pirk [egrep] (Oct 07)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- Re: Were A record domain names ever limited to 23 characters? Jimmy Hess (Oct 07)
- Re: Were A record domain names ever limited to 23 characters? steve pirk [egrep] (Oct 07)
- Re: Were A record domain names ever limited to 23 characters? Owen DeLong (Oct 07)
- Re: Were A record domain names ever limited to 23 characters? bmanning (Oct 10)
- Message not available
- Re: Were A record domain names ever limited to 23 characters? steve pirk [egrep] (Oct 11)
- Re: Were A record domain names ever limited to 23 characters? steve pirk [egrep] (Oct 07)
- Re: Were A record domain names ever limited to 23 characters? Jay Ashworth (Oct 07)
- Re: Were A record domain names ever limited to 23 characters? Joe Hamelin (Oct 07)
- Re: Were A record domain names ever limited to 23 characters? Jay Ashworth (Oct 07)
- Re: Were A record domain names ever limited to 23 characters? Owen DeLong (Oct 07)
- Re: Were A record domain names ever limited to 23 characters? Joe Hamelin (Oct 07)
- Re: Were A record domain names ever limited to 23 characters? JC Dill (Oct 10)