- a character string which represents a complete domain name
     (often called "absolute").  For example, "poneria.ISI.EDU."

   - a character string that represents the starting labels of a
     domain name which is incomplete, and should be completed by
     local software using knowledge of the local domain (often
     called "relative").  For example, "poneria" used in the
     ISI.EDU domain.

Relative names are either taken relative to a well known origin, or to a
list of domains used as a search list.  Relative names appear mostly at
the user interface, where their interpretation varies from
implementation to implementation, and in master files, where they are
relative to a single origin domain name.  The most common interpretation
uses the root "." as either the single origin or as one of the members
of the search list, so a multi-label relative name is often one where
the trailing dot has been omitted to save typing.

To simplify implementations, the total number of octets that represent a
domain name (i.e., the sum of all label octets and label lengths) is
limited to 255.

A domain is identified by a domain name, and consists of that part of
the domain name space that is at or below the domain name which
specifies the domain.  A domain is a subdomain of another domain if it
is contained within that domain.  This relationship can be tested by
seeing if the subdomain's name ends with the containing domain's name.
For example, A.B.C.D is a subdomain of B.C.D, C.D, D, and " ".

3.2. Administrative guidelines on use

As a matter of policy, the DNS technical specifications do not mandate a
particular tree structure or rules for selecting labels; its goal is to
be as general as possible, so that it can be used to build arbitrary
applications.  In particular, the system was designed so that the name
space did not have to be organized along the lines of network
boundaries, name servers, etc.  The rationale for this is not that the
name space should have no implied semantics, but rather that the choice
of implied semantics should be left open to be used for the problem at




 
RFC 1034             Domain Concepts and Facilities        November 1987


hand, and that different parts of the tree can have different implied
semantics.  For example, the IN-ADDR.ARPA domain is organized and
distributed by network and host address because its role is to translate
from network or host numbers to names; NetBIOS domains [RFC-1001, RFC-
1002] are flat because that is appropriate for that application.

However, there are some guidelines that apply to the "normal" parts of
the name space used for hosts, mailboxes, etc., that will make the name
space more uniform, provide for growth, and minimize problems as
software is converted from the older host table.  The political
decisions about the top levels of the tree originated in RFC-920.
Current policy for the top levels is discussed in [RFC-1032].  MILNET
conversion issues are covered in [RFC-1031].

Lower domains which will eventually be broken into multiple zones should
provide branching at the top of the domain so that the eventual
decomposition can be done without renaming.  Node labels which use
special characters, leading digits, etc., are likely to break older
software which depends on more restrictive choices.

3.3. Technical guidelines on use

Before the DNS can be used to hold naming information for some kind of
object, two needs must be met:

   - A convention for mapping between object names and domain
     names.  This describes how information about an object is
     accessed.

   - RR types and data formats for describing the object.

These rules can be quite simple or fairly complex.  Very often, the
designer must take into account existing formats and plan for upward
compatibility for existing usage.  Multiple mappings or levels of
mapping may be required.

For hosts, the mapping depends on the existing syntax for host names
which is a subset of the usual text representation for domain names,
together with RR formats for describing host addresses, etc.  Because we
need a reliable inverse mapping from address to host name, a special
mapping for addresses into the IN-ADDR.ARPA domain is also defined.

For mailboxes, the mapping is slightly more complex.  The usual mail
address @<mail-domain> is mapped into a domain name by
converting  into a single label (regardles of dots it
contains), converting <mail-domain> into a domain name using the usual
text format for domain names (dots denote label breaks), and
concatenating the two to form a single domain name.  Thus the mailbox