OT: spamming tech question

[Benjamin Scott]

On Sun, 10 Apr 2005, Bill McGonigle wrote:
> & is an invalid DNS character.  a-z,A-Z,0-9,- are valid.

   Technically speaking, the Domain Name System specification allows any octet 
in a label (RFC-1035, Section 3.1).  What you are describing are the rules for 
Internet host names.  While it is today used almost exclusively for Internet 
names, DNS was designed to be useful elsewhere as well.  So, technically 
speaking, it is not an error for a DNS implementation to attempt to resolve 
such names, and arguably the right thing to do.

   Whether or not it is right for a higher-level program (like a web browser) 
to pass such names to a resolver is outside of the scope of the DNS 
specification.  ;-)

-- 
Ben <dragonhawk at iname.com>