Re: Good Netkeeping Seal of Approval (GNKSA)

[Sudish Joseph <sudish@mindspring.com>]

Sudish Joseph writes:
> I believe it's a hack to let people tell the resolver not to try
> tacking on domains in it's search list (which is also considered a
> hack, I believe).  

I went and checked 822 in the hopes of killing this thread before it
wells up. :/  Essentially, 822 doesn't allow it.

People use it with tools like dig/host/etc. coz they're used to having
that form short cut the resolver.  W/o the resolver hack, the trailing
period indicates the root domain and is therefore superfluous.  It's
illegal in mail.

The evidence follows,
-Sudish

[ Severely edited, from RFC 822 ]

address     =  mailbox
mailbox     =  addr-spec
addr-spec   =  local-part "@" domain
domain      =  sub-domain *("." sub-domain)
sub-domain  =  domain-ref / domain-literal
domain-ref  =  atom
atom        =  1*<any CHAR except specials, SPACE and CTLs>
specials    =  "(" / ")" / "<" / ">" / "@"  ; Must be in quoted-
            /  "," / ";" / ":" / "\" / <">  ;  string, to use
            /  "." / "[" / "]"              ;  within a word.

[ I.e., no "."'s in sub-domains, and all except the first subdomain
  are preceded by "."'s ]

[ From paragraphs 3 and 4 in section 6.2.1 of 822, "Domains" ]

        The root node is common to all addresses; consequently, it  is
        not  referenced. [...]

        The "top" of the domain addressing hierarchy -- a child of the
        root  --  is  indicated  by  the right-most field, in a domain
        specification. [...]