[DNSOP] dotless names (was Re: followup and proposed actions: RFC 6761 interim and next steps)

[David Conrad <[e-mail]>]

<digression>

> dotless names were never contemplated as endpoints, even in the HOSTS.TXT era

Err, what?

All names were dotless in the "HOSTS.TXT era" (well, depending on what you mean by the "HOSTS.TXT era" -- I'm assuming pre-RFC 881) and they were all endpoints.

> the raw
> fact of the matter is that a dotless name should _never_ be accidentally
> presentation-reachable.

I'd be OK dotless names if there is a mutual understanding of the implications of those name for relevant parties. For example, I think it'd be fun to move the root servers out of root-servers.net and into the root, i.e.:

$ORIGIN .
...
a IN A 198.41.0.4
b IN A 192.228.79.201
...

> what i mean by presentation reachable is, you can't ping it, you can't
> send mail to it, you can't point an MX or NS or PTR at it, you can't
> look up its AAAA or A by typing it into a web browser, and so on.

Maybe those features are actually desirable. The real issue is expectations. For the vast majority of uses dotless names are simply not an option as there are way too many built-in expectations in pretty much every piece of software that deals with domain names.  However, as mentioned above, there may be cases where there are no expectations (or, the expectations aren't actually necessary -- does any root server operator want someone to try to point their browser at their root server and get something useful back?).

</digression>

Regards,
-drc