Re: [ga] More on localized tlds
On the topic of localized TLDs, Paul Stahura wrote to me with the following observation after reading my post on area code tlds (reprinted with permission): numerical TLDs are not allowed (its in rfc 1035... "2.3.1. Preferred name syntax The DNS specifications attempt to be as general as possible in the rules for constructing domain names. .... They must start with a letter, end with a letter or digit, and have as interior characters only letters, digits, and hyphen." That requirement to begin only with a letter has been out of date ever since the formation of 3com (1980?) and other companies (2wire) that begin their name with a digit. I'm not sure where the more up-to-date stuff is, possibly in the host requirements rfc? The DNS protocol itself can be 8-bit clean, meaning that it can carry Unicode. But it has never been entirely clear to me whether implementations are, in fact, 8-bit clean. If one wants to experiment with names with binary-data do a dig on: maps-to-nonascii.cavebear.com (This blows some [e.g. Fedora Core] implementations of gethostbyname()) Of course for more fun you can read the Magna Carta via DNS: dig @lear.cavebear.com mc.cavebear.com axfr --karl--
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