[ih] Tell me about host names and 3com

[Jack Haverty]

All of these acronyms and RFCs (such as referenced in recent 
announcements of imminent new rules for sending email) are pretty 
confusing.   Some things are "standards"; others are "draft standards", 
and some are just "standards track".

If I am an entrepreneur musing about writing a new mail system, both 
clients and server, totally from scratch with no use of existing 
libraries or such, is there any place where I can find the complete set 
of specifications for what my new software has to do in order to 
interoperate with the rest of Internet email?

How do I sort through thousands of RFCs to figure out what's actually 
important?

Or do I just build something as yet another silo.

Jack Haverty

PS - No, I'm not going to write another email system...but maybe someone 
will.   Perhaps a new-fangled quantum computer program that can generate 
spam at rates never seen before?   Powered by AI of course...


On 1/17/24 12:28, Andrew Sullivan via Internet-history wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 17, 2024 at 03:20:21PM +1300, Brian E Carpenter via 
> Internet-history wrote:
>> Yes but, but, 1123 is *host* requirements and 952 was about /etc/hosts.
>
> Yes.
>> 1123 didn't update 1035, which is about domain names. Maybe that 
>> should be submitted as an erratum.
>>
>
> I don't think it should be.  RFC 1035 doesn't actually require the 
> "preferred name syntax".  People sometimes read section 2.3.1 as such 
> a requirement, but it isn't one.  This is made quite explicit in RFC 
> 2181, section 11:
>
>    Those restrictions [length and the location of the zero-length label]
>    aside, any binary string whatever can be used as the label of any
>    resource record.  Similarly, any binary string can serve as the value
>    of any record that includes a domain name as some or all of its value
>    (SOA, NS, MX, PTR, CNAME, and any others that may be added).
>    Implementations of the DNS protocols must not place any restrictions
>    on the labels that can be used.  In particular, DNS servers must not
>    refuse to serve a zone because it contains labels that might not be
>    acceptable to some DNS client programs.
> Best regards,
>
> A
>

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