Message for Bind-users

Eric A. Hall ehall at ehsco.com
Tue Jun 13 18:44:08 UTC 2000


> Correct me if I am wrong, but the underscore is not a legal character
> in any domain name.

The underscore is an illegal character for hostnames specifically (RFC
972 applies to hostnames in particular) and as such should not be used
in domain names or labels that will be interpreted as a hostname. This
means domains, A records, CNAME, MX and other records where a hostname
or a hostname-like string will be used.

Underscores are perfectly legal characters in the raw DNS, and can
appear anywhere (SRV records use them explicitly). It's just that they
shouldn't be used anywhere they will be interepreted as hostnames.

-- 
Eric A. Hall                                      http://www.ehsco.com/
Internet Core Protocols        http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/coreprot/



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