I don't think 1034 was handed down from a mountain on stone tablets.
It was not. But when other programs started using the DNS, it was *they*
that endorsed what the DNS as per that doc.
...but they also profiled it in various ways for use with that specific
app. Some apps define their own RRs, others use MX or SRV or TXT
records, others restrict the syntax of allowable DNS names beyond the
restrictions imposed by DNS itself. And IDNs have their own subtle (and
not-so-subtle) effects which can also vary from one app to the next.
It's really no different than a protocol specification saying (for
example) "this protocol is layered on top of TLS, but certain
ciphersuites are not acceptable as they're not suitable for this case."
I believe it always was inevitable that different apps would use DNS
(or any shared naming facility) in slightly different ways.
Yes. Some ways are compliant, others are not.
Yes this is somewhat confusing, but DNS (like the rest of the
Internet) has been stretched far beyond its original design goals or
scale. For instance, we don't interpret DNS names as hostnames any more
Who doesn't? If you're saying they could be more than one host, fine. If
you're saying they're not hosts any more, I disagree.
I'm saying that the mapping between a DNS name and a set of hosts is
more-or-less arbitrary. It can be zero hosts, one host, many hosts.
And with MX and SRV records, the mapping between the DNS name and the
hosts that provide that service can differ from one application to the
next. That's a long way from the traditional concept of "host name"
where a host was a single box with a user community and a set of
services that were all associated with that name. Nowdays we're much
more likely to use a different DNS name for each service. The
traditional notion of "host" as a box that you could log into is only
one such service, and (for most users) a fairly minor one at that.
If you're intent on saying "the Internet is whatever anyone says it is
on any given day" - as the above suggests - I appreciate your confusion.
I prefer to consider the Internet as being based on standards, and
reliably working when - and *because* - we adhere to them.
I often find myself *wishing* the Internet worked that way. Then we
wouldn't have NATs, for instance. And I long for a day when we actually
design protocols that use other protocols based on a careful
consideration of well-known characteristics of those substrate protocols
- much in the way that a structural engineer (say) designs structures
based on the characteristics of load-bearing members and fasteners.
But I don't think we're there yet. And even if we had been doing that
all of these years, I doubt that we'd all be using DNS in the same way
today. Rather, we'd have a dozen DNS-like systems, all slightly
different from one another, with some degree of inconsistency in name
assignment from one to the next. Because insisting on strict adherence
to 1035 would not have removed the need for different protocols to use
DNS in slightly different ways.
Keith
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