[ih] Tell me about host names and 3com

[Andrew Sullivan]

On Tue, Jan 16, 2024 at 02:37:28PM -0500, John Levine via Internet-history wrote:

>Does anyone remember the details? RFC1035 is still the official
>standard for hostnames, and the initial letter rule has been wrong for
>a long time.

Hi,

What you want is RFC 1123, section 2.1:


       The syntax of a legal Internet host name was specified in RFC-952
       [DNS:4].  One aspect of host name syntax is hereby changed: the
       restriction on the first character is relaxed to allow either a
       letter or a digit.  Host software MUST support this more liberal
       syntax.

Bob Braden actually referred to this to me in a conversation one time as "the 3Com exception".  

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
ajs at crankycanuck.ca