DNS Naming Convention

[Barry Margolin]

In article <bnb8i2$ihr$1 at sf1.isc.org>,  <Mark_Andrews at isc.org> wrote:
>
>> > 		 SCHEDULE A TO VERISIGN SERVICE AGREEMENT
>> > 
>> > 	ADDITIONAL TERMS APPLICABLE TO REGISTRANTS OF DOMAIN NAMES 
>> > 
>> > 5. Domain Name Dispute Policy. If you registered a domain name through us, 
>> you agree to be bound by our current domain name dispute policy that is incor
>> porated herein and made a part of this Agreement by reference. The current ve
>> rsion of the domain name dispute policy may be found at our Web site: http://
>> www.netsol.com/en_US/legal/dispute-policy.jhtml.
>> > 
>> >  6. Domain Name Dispute Policy Modifications. You agree that we, in our sol
>> e...
>> 
>> OK, I guess I misunderstood then. I thought ns1.blahblah2.com is the
>> name of my NAME SERVER, not a domain name. When I register the name
>> server with the registrar, it asks for the name server. Nowhere does
>> it mention domain name. A Domain Name Server (DNS) is not the same
>> thing as a Domain Name, right? Can you point out to me somewhere where
>> it states that a name server must be a domain name?
>> 
>	
>	"ns.example.net" is a domain name and it is a sub-domain of
>	"example.net", "net" and "."
>
>	"example.net" is a domain name and it is a sub-domain of "net"
>	and "."
>
>	"net" is a domain name and it is a sub-domain of "."
>
>	"." is a domain name and it is the parent of all domain names.
>
>	"this.is.a.very.long.domain.name.example.net" is a domain
>	name.

While those are all domain names by the strict definition of the term, they
aren't all the kinds of domain names that registrars sell and have
jurisdiction over.  A registrar for the COM domain only sells xxx.COM, not
yyy.xxx.COM.  Once you own xxx.COM, you're free to create any yyy.xxx.COM
subdomains within it.

Note also that when you register a server via a registrar, you generally do
it through a separate "host registration" process, not "domain
registration" (with some registrars this step is implicit when you
associate the server with your domain).

I'm not sure precisely what criteria registrars use when customers try to
register hosts.  It seems to me that only the owner of XXX.COM should be
allowed to register ns.XXX.COM.  Otherwise, someone could register
www.level3.com and this glue record would override the www.level3.com A
record on our authoritative servers.

-- 
Barry Margolin, barry.margolin at level3.com
Level(3), Woburn, MA
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