Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!pacbell.com!ucsd!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!olivea!tymix!3comvax!bridge2!v2b!mdb From: mdb@ESD.3Com.COM (Mark D. Baushke) Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip.domains Subject: Re: PTR records of gateways on the Internet Message-ID: Date: 11 Jan 91 04:43:03 GMT References: <1991Jan9.195641.17628@slcs.slb.com> <71990@bu.edu.bu.edu> Sender: news@v2b.ESD.3Com.COM Organization: 3Com Corp., Santa Clara, CA. Lines: 24 In-reply-to: ckd@cs.bu.edu's message of 10 Jan 91 20:38:58 GMT On 10 Jan 91 20:38:58 GMT, ckd@cs.bu.edu (Christopher Davis) said: [...] ckd> ;; ANSWERS: ckd> Ann_Arbor.MI.NSS.NSF.NET. 14400 A 35.1.1.50 [...] ckd> ;; ANSWERS: ckd> 8.81.140.129.in-addr.arpa. 9726 PTR Ann_Arbor.MI.NSS.NSF.NET. [...] Very interesting... I do not believe that any of the RFCs have extended the name syntax to allow an underscore (_) character in a name. I know that RFC 1123 section 2.1 allowed such names to begin with a digit (so 3Com.COM became legal), but I believe that the name Ann_Arbor.MI.NSS.NSF.NET voilates the syntax in the RFCs. As far as I know, RFC 952 together with the relaxation in RFC 1123 say that a "name" is a text string drawn from the alphabet (A-Za-z), digits (0-9), minus sign (-), and period (.). It looks to me like the NSSes have more than one problem with their entries. -- Mark mdb@ESD.3Com.COM