Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!snorkelwacker!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cis.ohio-state.edu!karl_kleinpaste From: karl_kleinpaste@cis.ohio-state.edu Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp Subject: Re: Who pays the bill? Message-ID: Date: 2 Aug 90 15:39:52 GMT References: Sender: news@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu Organization: Ohio State Computer Science Lines: 23 steve@thelake.mn.org writes: This leads to something I've been wondering about: What about third- and greater-level domains, as in "bozo.foo.com"? Is there a need for them to be registered? Subdomains must be known within the context of their containing domain. E.g., cis.ohio-state.edu is a proper domain name because the nameservers for ohio-state.edu know about it. You can't ask the root servers directly about cis.ohio-state.edu; they'll just tell you who's responsible for ohio-state.edu. bletch.ohio-state.edu is an improper domain name for the same reason, that the nameservers for ohio-state.edu know of no such subdomain. I have seen that mail to thelake.mn.org from Internet sites sometimes fails with error messages indicating that there is no such domain. But I thought that one of the big advantages of having a qualified, registered domain was that multiple sites could be served with a single listing. It shouldn't happen, but nameserver implementations aren't perfect, either. I have a nameserver go bananas on me every few weeks. Nothing major, really -- restart and it's fine. I just checked on thelake.mn.org and got reasonable answers about your MX being nic.mr.net.