Connected: An Internet Encyclopedia
2.1. The history of domain names

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2.1. The history of domain names

2.1. The history of domain names

The impetus for the development of the domain system was growth in the Internet:

The result was several ideas about name spaces and their management [IEN-116, RFC-799, RFC-819, RFC-830]. The proposals varied, but a common thread was the idea of a hierarchical name space, with the hierarchy roughly corresponding to organizational structure, and names using "." as the character to mark the boundary between hierarchy levels. A design using a distributed database and generalized resources was described in [RFC-882, RFC-883]. Based on experience with several implementations, the system evolved into the scheme described in this memo.

The terms "domain" or "domain name" are used in many contexts beyond the DNS described here. Very often, the term domain name is used to refer to a name with structure indicated by dots, but no relation to the DNS. This is particularly true in mail addressing [Quarterman 86].


Next: 2.2. DNS design goals

Connected: An Internet Encyclopedia
2.1. The history of domain names