Re: unqualified domains, was ICANN to allow commercial gTLDs

[Paul Vixie <vixie () isc org>]

> Date: Sun, 19 Jun 2011 19:30:58 -0500
> From: Jeremy <jbaino () gmail com>
>
> "DK" may not be hierarchical, but "DK." is. If you try to resolve "DK"
> on it's own, many (most? all?) DNS clients will attach the search
> string/domain name of the local system in order to make it a FQDN. The
> same happens when you try and resolve a non-existent domain. Such as
> alskdiufwfeiuwdr3948dx.com, in wireshark I see the initial request
> followed by alskdiufwfeiuwdr3948dx.com.gateway.2wire.net. However if I
> qualify it with the trailing dot, it stops after the first lookup.
> "DK." is a valid FQDN and should be considered hierarchical due to the
> dot being the root and anything before that is a branch off of the
> root. see RFC1034

i think he's seen RFC 1034 :-).  anyway, i don't see the difference between
http://sony/ and http://sony./ and if a technology person tried to explain
to a marketing person that single-token TLD names *can* be used as long as
there's a trailing dot, the result would hopefully be "that glazed look" of
nonunderstanding but would far more likely be an interpretation of "oh, so
it's OK after all, we'll use it that way, thanks!"

furthermore, the internet has more in it than just the web, and i know that
"foo@sony." will not have its RHS ("sony.") treated as a hierarchical name.

i think we have to just discourage lookups of single-token names, universally.