RFC 897 (rfc897) - Page 2 of 8
Domain name system implementation schedule
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
RFC 897 February 1984
Domain Implementation Schedule
For example,
OBERST%EDUCOM.MAILNET@MIT-MULTICS
EDMISTON.CIC@CSNET-RELAY
The Future Situation
Hierarchical Names
Because of the growth of the Internet, structured names (or domain
style names) will be used. Each element of the structured name
will be a character string (with the same constraints that
previously applied to the simple names).
For example: F.ISI.USC.ARPA
Servers
Every host in the Internet will be expected to have a way of
translating the name of any other host into its Internet address.
By and large, the name to address translation will be done by
interacting with a service. There will be a number of servers
that each hold a portion of the name to address information.
The maintenance of the translation data will be subdivided and
distributed.
There are several stages of implementation for the servers and
several levels of development for use of the domain style names.
First, there is the simple substitution of the domain style names
for the current host names, and the subdivision of these into
several domains. At this stage all domain style names directly
translate to host addresses and all domain style names have two
components.
For example: USC-ISIF.ARPA or USC-ISIA.DDN
and: A or
Here we expect that "USC-ISIF.ARPA" is the name of an Internet
host and that we can send mail for "Postel" to the SMTP port on
that host. It may be that some backward host can still fake it
by ignoring the ".ARPA" and looking up an address for
"USC-ISIF".
Postel