On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 09:39:43AM +0100, João Damas wrote: > Thing is I had this vague impression that domain names weren't > allowed to begin with a number until later than that. Upon checking, > RFC 952, published in October 1985 had the starting-number > restriction and it wasn't until RFC 1123 (Oct 1989) that this got > relaxed. Anyone around remember how 3com.com got registered ahead of > it seemingly being a valid domain name (and again, this is in itself > a bit confusing as RFC 952 introduces the restriction for hostnames > and domain names, and RFC 1123 only seems to lift the restriction > for hostnames)
I can't answer this question exactly, but I had occasion to ask Bob Braden directly about the context of the "always alphabetic" text in 1123 at one of the meetings last year, because that text in 1123 remains problematic (depending how you read it, it may prohibit TLDs of the form xn--[something], which would be bad given that there are such TLDs in the root zone today). He brightened up and immediately recognized the text in 1123 as "the 3com rule". This makes me think that he might be able to answer your question. Another place to ask might be the Internet history list, where people who remember some of the early decisions tend to hang out. Best, A -- Andrew Sullivan a...@shinkuro.com Shinkuro, Inc. _______________________________________________ DNSOP mailing list DNSOP@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/dnsop
