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Re: draft-eastlake-2606bis-00.txt: Suggestions for modifications
--On torsdag, oktober 20, 2005 14:13:07 +0000 Paul Vixie <paul@vix.com> wrote: 


# If not, each and every protocol needs updating with its own "tie-breaker
# rule" - that's stupid.
#
# It's possible to write that rule in many different forms.
# But I think it's the IETF's job to pick one.

when did the ietf community start ruling by law rather than leading by
recommendations?  can't we just say "any application or library which
does DNS lookups to translate presentation-layer endpoint identifiers
into network-layer endpoint identifiers should take care to avoid doing
DNS lookups for presentation-layer content which is syntactically valid
as an IPv4 or IPv6 host name"?
Except that we've now created a class of names that are OK to register, and OK to populate in the DNS, but some applications will never be able to look up.... that's kind of bizarre. I think the "don't register numeric TLDs" is a recommendation too, in the sense that everything the IETF produces for external consumption is. And a simpler one. 


note that bind's gethostbyname() has had this logic for some years now:

                                /*
                                 * All-numeric, no dot at the end.
                                 * Fake up a hostent as if we'd actually
                                 * done a lookup.
                                 */
                                if (!inet_aton(name, &host_addr)) {
				   ...

(that's from bind4's gethnamaddr.c file, similar stuff is in bind8/bind9.)


entirely tangential, but illustrates something, I think....
this line of code is mostly responsible for the widely held but erroneous belief that hta@129.241.1.99 is a valid email address. 

hta@[129.241.1.99] is a valid email address. hta@129.241.1.99 isn't.
Some mailers get it right, some don't.

                      Harald




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