[ih] DNS History

[Dave CROCKER]

Small tidbits:

By accident, RFC 822 published a spec for domain /names/ slightly before the DNS 
specification came out.  The efforts were parallel and 822 was a revision to 733 
that included positioning for Internet (as opposed to Arpanet) usage.  This 
included support for the scalable host naming system.

And RFC 821 contained the support also.

I remember being confused that each hop in the SMTP sequence was being given the 
/full/ domain name, rather than some incrementally stripped version and Jon 
Postel gave me a tutorial about the difference between global naming and 
route-based naming.  Up to that time, any multi-part naming really was 
route-based, in some fashion, including the work we had done with CSNet 
(user at host@gateway).

d/

On 3/8/2010 12:31 PM, Craig Partridge wrote:
>> First, in terms of the RFC system, where are the comments themselves?  Were
>> they hard-copies that no longer exist, or mailing lists that have been
>> tucked away somewhere?  Is there any correspondence left (for DNS related
>> RFCs) or has it all been lost?
>
> There was no formal comment system (nor is there now).  But there were lots
> of comments on drafts on various mailing lists.   For DNS issues the
> archives of the namedroppers list is probably your best place
> (http://psg.com/lists/namedroppers and kudos to Randy Bush for bringing it
> up)
>
>> Second, does anyone have or know where to find details about the
>> debates/conversations that took place leading up to RFC 1591 and what
>> appears to be a "compromise" between generic and ccTLDs?
>
> RFC 1591 is awfully late -- most key technical issues, as I recall, were
> determined when RFC973 came out.
>
>> Third, it is not entirely clear to me exactly why DNS was engineered in
>> place of X.500.  It is my understanding at this early point in my research
>> that OSI standards seemed inevitable at one point, and sources have told me
>> that DNS was designed to get something out the door quickly (presumably
>> something that *wasn't* X.500).  Was X.500 simply based on an old paradigm
>> (white pages / old telecom) and seen as a bulky and slow alternative?  When,
>> and with whom, was the actual decision made to ditch X.500 altogether?  This
>> part of the story goes a long way to explaining why everyone in the world
>> doesn't have a unique identifier.
>
> I have my theory on that subject -- I'll send you the relevant paper I wrote
> on the history of email, there's a brief discussion.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Craig
>

-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net