> >>What this brings to mind is that we used to have implicit DNS domain > >>search in the early days of DNS. When edu.com accidentally hijacked > >>a huge chunk of the Internet, most of the net very quickly got rid of > >>implicit search, and we got the explicit DNS search feature that many > >>people are discussing now. > > > >Yes. > > Can you (or Ofer) define how you're using the terms "explicit" and > "implicit" in terms of DNS search, and what their relevance is to the > topic of dotless domains? And no, I'm not being snarky, I think part of > the problem here is a fundamental misunderstanding of how the vast > majority of hosts are configured currently. You're not being snarky, but that indicates that you seem to have missed my point, which is not about the technical details of how domain search got changed after the edu.com disaster. My point is not to make a direct parallel between how domain search changed, and dotless domains, and you seem to be looking at it in that light. What this brings to mind is that we had a DNS system that was vulnerable to the addition of something to the DNS that people had expected nobody would make the mistake of doing, but it happened and caused damage, and the net reacted by altering how DNS software works in order to protect against that damage. At the time, the obvious defensive change was "don't do implicit domain search". If dotless domains cause damage as many people here predict, what I'm saying is that I think we'll react similarly, and that I guess the defensive change people will widely deploy is to reject A/AAAA/MX records at the top level. You really do not need to drill into the specifics of the change from implicit to explicit domain search in reaction to edu.com, in this context. So it sounds to me like you have something quite different in mind. I don't know what you think I was trying to say - it's not anything I said explicitly, so perhaps you think I was trying to subtly say something between the lines. To be clear: I wasn't. -- Cos