Subject: [DNSOP] Suffix? (Was: I-D Action: draft-hoffman-dns-terminology-01.txt

From: Stephane Bortzmeyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2015 14:30:13 +0100

On Mon, Jan 19, 2015 at 02:10:50PM -0800,
 [email-masked] <[email-masked]> wrote 
 a message of 43 lines which said:

>         Title           : DNS Terminology

What about adding a definition of "public suffix"? I suggest the text
from
<https://code.google.com/p/guava-libraries/wiki/InternetDomainNameExplained>:

> Public suffix: A domain under which people can register subdomains,
> and on which cookies should not be set. [with good examples
> afterwards]

This terme seems actually used, unlike the strange FLD
<http://domainnamewire.com/2015/02/18/domain-definitions-fld-for-free-level-domain/>

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From: Ray Bellis <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2015 14:54:12 +0000

> On 6 Mar 2015, at 13:30, Stephane Bortzmeyer <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 

s/people/independent third-parties/

Ray

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From: Paul Vixie <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 06 Mar 2015 10:53:36 -0800

> Stephane Bortzmeyer <mailto:[email-masked]>
> Friday, March 06, 2015 5:30 AM

i object to the term "suffix", which sounds like a CP/M "file
extension", like TXT in "FOOBAR.TXT", and is actually meant and used
that way, by people who don't realize that "FOOBAR.TXT" in DNS is more
closely aligned with "OTHERNAME.TXT" than it is with "FOOBAR.COM". in
other words, the right-to-left precedence is deliberately obscured by
the wrong-think term "suffix".

i suggest that we invent rather than import. i like "DMD =
Delegation-Mostly Domain". this allows for not just infrastructure
namespaces like IP6.INT (for which delegations might not be on the first
sublabel, and the delegations are often same-organization or other-DMD
organizations) and also for new invented terms like "Public DMD" to
describe domains like CO.UK (or COM) for which the delegation points are
on the first sublabel and nearly always accompany an administrative
boundary (so, different-organization below the cut.)

-- 
Paul Vixie

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From: "John Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 6 Mar 2015 18:59:49 -0000

><http://domainnamewire.com/2015/02/18/domain-definitions-fld-for-free-level-domain/>

It's definitely used.  We're spinning up the DBOUND WG to figure out what it actually means
and if there's any way to describe it within the DNS.

The current implementation of public suffixes is a text file one can download from
https://publicsuffix.org/

We all agree that's awful, but there's no agreement about what would be less awful.

I also agree with Vixie that the name is unfortunate, but it's well
established and if we invented some other name, nobody would know what
we were talking about.

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From: Stephane Bortzmeyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 9 Mar 2015 13:24:37 +0100

On Fri, Mar 06, 2015 at 10:53:36AM -0800,
 Paul Vixie <[email-masked]> wrote 
 a message of 135 lines which said:

> extension", like TXT in "FOOBAR.TXT",

I do not see the relationship. I was suggesting "public suffix"
precisely to avoid the marketing and fuzzy "extension".

> in other words, the right-to-left precedence is deliberately
> obscured by the wrong-think term "suffix".

Not everyone is little-endian, some people think big-endian :-) Do you
think Paul Mockapetris is a close parent of Paul Vixie ? :-)

> i suggest that we invent rather than import.

"Public suffix" is:

* actually in use
* technically correct ("ac.uk is the public suffix of
   www.physics.cam.ac.uk")