maximum size of a domain

[Barry Margolin]

In article <Pine.GSO.4.10.10002021003180.26998-100000 at uhunix2>,
Steven Sakata  <steven at hawaii.edu> wrote:
>I tried to register a long domain name with Network Solutions and was told
>that there is a 26-character limit (including the four characters in .com).
>I asked if this was a Network Solutions limitation or if this is a limitation
>specified in an RFC.  I did not get a response.  Does anyone know what the
>maximum character-length of a domain is and what RFC contains this information.

RFC 1034 says:

"Section Each node has a label, which is zero to 63 octets in length."
That's the maximum length of each component of the domain name.

"To simplify implementations, the total number of octets that represent a
domain name (i.e., the sum of all label octets and label lengths) is
limited to 255."  That's maximum length of a fully-qualified name in DNS.

The 26-character limit is NSI's.  If it's a problem for you, there was a
guy who was spamming this group every couple of days a few weeks ago about
his registrar service that allows long names.  I guess you should go to
him.  Sorry, I don't remember his name, but if he monitors this group I'm
sure you'll hear from him.

-- 
Barry Margolin, barmar at bbnplanet.com
GTE Internetworking, Powered by BBN, Burlington, MA
*** DON'T SEND TECHNICAL QUESTIONS DIRECTLY TO ME, post them to newsgroups.
Please DON'T copy followups to me -- I'll assume it wasn't posted to the group.