Network Working Group Jon Postel Request for Comments: 897 ISI February 1984 Updates: RFC 881 Domain Name System Implementation Schedule Status of this Memo This memo is a policy statement on the implementation of the Domain Style Naming System in the Internet. This memo is a partial update of RFC 881. This is an official policy statement of the ICCB and the DARPA. The intent of this memo is to detail the schedule for the implementation for the Domain Style Naming System. The explanation of how this system works is to be found in the references. The Current Situation Simple Names Hosts in the ARPA research and DDN operational communities are currently assigned names in a flat or global name space of character strings. There are some limits on these names. They must start with a letter, end with a letter or digit and have only letters or digits or hyphen as interior characters. Case is not significant. For example: USC-ISIF Tables Every host in the Internet is 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 is done by looking up the information in a table of all hosts. The maintenance of this table is centralized at the Network Information Center (NIC). Each host is expected to obtain a current copy of the table on a timely basis. Interface to the World A great deal of mail moves between the Internet and other "systems" that somehow transport mail among computers. This is currently done by hiding some sort of "other-system" addressing information in the local-part of the mail address and using a mail-relay host in the host-part of the mailbox. Postel