Authoritative Server - Referrals to root

[Jim Reid]

> Seems to have been the way the names were devised in RFC2606.  Of 
> course,
> past performance is no indicator of future results, but I'd still find 
> it
> hard to believe that "internal" would end up being created for 
> something
> unrelated to the meaning of the word "internal".

With ICANN, anything is possible. :-) And the word internal can be used 
for other contexts
besides a private name space. You yourself mentioned internal medicine 
for instance.

> Your point is....?  Yeah, right, nothing.  They've discovered some 
> purposes
> for which defined TLD's could be useful.  They reserved them.  Their 
> failure
> to reserve "internal" as one of them does not lessen the utility of it.
> BCP on the Internet is a moving target.  There will be things in ten 
> years
> that we've not even thought of today.

So what? That's not an excuse for conjuring up ad-hoc naming schemes 
which could
conflict with a real domain name on the internet.

>> Secondly, you're confusing a bogus, internal-use-only TLD, with a 
>> valid
>> domain name. Creating your own private copy of 10.in-addr.arpa (or any
>> other reverse zone for RFC1918 nets) is mostly harmless.  On the
>> internet, 10.in-addr.arpa already exists and has a defined purpose.
>
> The difference between these being?

I'm sorry if you don't/can't understand the above paragraph.

>> Note that I'm not saying having a TLD like .internal for private
>> purposes is a Bad Thing. It's just that the name of that TLD needs to
>> be agreed and documented. The name shouldn't just be plucked out of
>> thin air. If a domain name is to be used for internal purposes, its
>> name should be one that's been expressly set aside for that purpose. 
>> ie
>> Those using that name can be certain it's not going to appear on the
>> public internet. That holds irrespective of whether the chosen
>> internal-only domain is a TLD or not.
>
> All right, then, what would /you/ have done?

I would not have plucked a TLD name out of thin air and  used it to 
create an ad-hoc naming scheme which had the (possibly hypothetical) 
potential to conflict with a real domain name on the Internet.

My earlier message on this thread have one example of a scheme which 
would not have had that problem: ie hostname-internal.sol.net (say) or 
something like that. Another option would have been a naming scheme 
like customer-server.internal.sol.net. There are other possibilities. 
Reaching for a bogus TLD isn't necessary.

> Actually, I don't really care if it gets accepted as an RFC.

This is regrettable. The RFC process is the thing that's fundamental to 
a coherent and working Internet.
Undermining that process (or ignoring the bits you don't like) is not 
healthy for everyone who uses the internet.
Your comment above is the sort of thing I'd expect to hear from the 
bozos who advocate "alternate roots".