{"draft":"draft-iab-dns-assumptions-03","doc_id":"RFC4367","title":"What's in a Name: False Assumptions about DNS Names","authors":["J. Rosenberg, Ed.","IAB"],"format":["ASCII","HTML"],"page_count":"17","pub_status":"INFORMATIONAL","status":"INFORMATIONAL","source":"IAB","abstract":"The Domain Name System (DNS) provides an essential service on the\r\nInternet, mapping structured names to a variety of data, usually IP\r\naddresses.  These names appear in email addresses, Uniform Resource\r\nIdentifiers (URIs), and other application-layer identifiers that are\r\noften rendered to human users.  Because of this, there has been a\r\nstrong demand to acquire names that have significance to people,\r\nthrough equivalence to registered trademarks, company names, types of\r\nservices, and so on.  There is a danger in this trend; the humans and\r\nautomata that consume and use such names will associate specific\r\nsemantics with some names and thereby make assumptions about the\r\nservices that are, or should be, provided by the hosts associated\r\nwith the names.  Those assumptions can often be false, resulting in a\r\nvariety of failure conditions.  This document discusses this problem\r\nin more detail and makes recommendations on how it can be avoided.  This memo provides information for the Internet community.","pub_date":"January 2006","keywords":["domain name system"],"obsoletes":[],"obsoleted_by":[],"updates":[],"updated_by":[],"see_also":[],"doi":"10.17487\/RFC4367","errata_url":"https:\/\/www.rfc-editor.org\/errata\/rfc4367"}