RE: 63/67 characters? Was RE: [wg-c] Consensus vote - "no" on pr

["William X. Walsh" <william@dso.net>]

On 12-Dec-1999 Karl Auerbach wrote:
> 
>> >         This expansion to 67 characters ...
>  
>> 1)  This has not been implemented yet by NSI...
> 
> Huh?  63 characters is RFC specified limit on the size of a "label" (a
> chunk between a pair of dots, including the implicit dot representing the 
> root) in a domain name name.  It has been that way ever since "the
> beginning".
> 
> The lesser limitations are merely an administrative convention - I've
> personally run with many third level names that are near or at the 63 byte
> limit.
> 
> Perhaps there is some implementation restriction in "bind" that imposes a
> limit more restrictive than the RFC and pertains only to SLD names.  But
> I'm not aware of such an additional restriction in the code.
> 

The author of that comment was referring to recent news that a registrar was going to
permit registration of second level names up to 67 characters in length, taking advantage
of a flaw in NSI's SRS system that didn't do this checking.  NSI is no longer accepting
those registrations, and has not indicated that they intend to support domains longer
than the current limit they have in place.

Sorry if my response wasn't clear.


--
William X. Walsh - DSo Internet Services
Email: william@dso.net  Fax:(209) 671-7934