Date: 20 Feb 2000 19:54:45 -0000
Message-ID: <20000220195445.21265.qmail@cr.yp.to>
From: "D. J. Bernstein" <djb@cr.yp.to>
To: namedroppers@internic.net
Subject: Re: a.dns.int
References: <20000215191952.24273.qmail@cr.yp.to>
Mime-Version: 1.0
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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