Re: [DNSOP] Status of "let localhost be localhost"?

"John Levine" <johnl@taugh.com> Sat, 12 August 2017 17:10 UTC

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Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2017 17:09:58 -0000
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From: John Levine <johnl@taugh.com>
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Subject: Re: [DNSOP] Status of "let localhost be localhost"?
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In article <CAPt1N1=hse1dYB7OhJvdXdtO+R2cZC6XRo-2-rupVy6dOqivfA@mail.gmail.com> you write:
>On Wed, Aug 9, 2017 at 12:31 PM, Stuart Cheshire <cheshire@apple.com> wrote:
>
>> [*] If you think it’s stupid to suggest a host might not treat “127.0.0.1”
>> as meaning loopback, why is that any more stupid than suggesting that a
>> host might not treat “localhost” as meaning loopback? Both are just as
>> arbitrary.

>The reason is that we understand the process by which names are resolved,
>and we understand the process by which addresses are configured.   You
>likely have only one IP stack on your host.   You may have dozens of stub
>resolvers.   So the stub resolvers are a target-rich environment for
>failure, and they fail unsafe, not safe: by default, they go to the DNS
>protocol to resolve names.

Right.  That's why it's long past time that we make it clear that
non-broken resolvers at any level will treat localhost as a special
case.  As you may have heard, we are not the Network Police, but we do
publish the occasional document telling people what to do if they want
to interoperate with the rest of the Internet.

R's,
John