Re: [idn] Proposed suggestions from Asia Pacific Top LevelDomain meeting

[Dan Oscarsson <Dan.Oscarsson@trab.se>]

>James Seng wrote:
>Paul Hoffman / IMC wrote:
>> "Current domain name" is defined as a domain name that contains only the
>> characters U+002D, U+0030 through U+0039, U+0041 through U+005A, and U+0061
>> through U+007A, and which begins with any of these characters except U+002D.
>
>"..begins or ends with.." would be better.
>
Is a domain name allowed to start with a digit?

But should a domin name be defined by what characters are allowed in a name?

Should it not be defined by how a name is used instead of what characters
it may contain?

In the DNS sense you could say that a domin name is the ordered
sequence of labels from the root down to the records accessed through the
name. In general this namn could contain any characters.

For domain names representing for example hosts, companies or web locations
we could restrict the allowed characters. Or do we by "domain name"
only mean the names representing hosts, companies etc?

>
>And thanks to Mark, I finally understood the difference between domain name
>and host name. We havent even reach that defination yet...

So what is the difference?
For me a host name is the name of a host while a domain name
can be the name of a host or of many other things.


   Dan