Re: Too long a domain name

Alvin Lim wrote:
>
> www.inspectorgaget-themovie.com is spot on 24 characters.
> RFC 952 states
>
> 1. A "name" (Net, Host, Gateway, or Domain name) is a text string up
> to 24 characters drawn from the alphabet (A-Z), digits (0-9), minus
> sign (-), and period (.).
>
> Thats why the super long domain name mentioned below dosen't work in
> squid - which is pretty strict with DNS rules.
>
> Mike Batchelor wrote:
> >
> > http://www.llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.co.uk
> > is an actual web site, and squid can't connect to it. Try it. The
> > dnsserver claims it can't resolve the IP. Yet all my DNS tools can, and I
> > can telnet to it, and issue a HTTP GET on port 80. In fact, this is the web
> > site for the village in Wales that has this name. ;) A web browser without
> > a proxy, and Gauntlet http-gw have no trouble with it.

RFC 952 is talking about the DOD Internet host table, which has nothing
to do with DNS, and is basically obsolete. RFC 1035 is what you're
looking for for DNS specifications, and it is DNS names that are used
in URLs, at least on the Internet.

Domain names are limited to 255 characters in total length, and labels
(the parts between "."s) are limited to 63 characters.

Domain names under ".com", ".org", ".net" registered through Network
Solutions are limited to 26 characters, including the top level domain
name, making "inspectorgadget-themovie.com" illegal under their current
rules at 28 total characters.

I believe they user to allow up to 27 characters not including the
top-level domain, so this example used to be legal, when it was
presumably created, at 24 characters. I don't know why they impose
these limits; there is nothing in the RFCs about these limits.

Third-level domains and below are never limited to less than the RFC-
specified 63 characters. I believe the example above was revealed on
the mailing list later to be the result of a implementation problem
in the IRIX resolver library.

Dave
Received on Wed Aug 11 1999 - 19:19:11 MDT