RFC 881 (rfc881) - Page 3 of 10

Domain names plan and schedule

RFC 881                                                    November 1983
The Domain Names Plan and Schedule                                      


      The plan is to make such a domain style name table available in
      parallel with the regular table for a few months, then to replace
      the regular table with this domain style table.  The dates for
      these changes is given in the schedule below.

      So far, no new domains have been introduced.  Only a table with
      all the entries having official names in the ARPA domain has been
      provided.  This should allow programs to be constructed to deal
      with domain style names in a general way without any special hacks
      to add or delete the string ".ARPA" to or from host names.

      The introduction of new domains is tied to the provision of domain
      servers by those domains.  As new domains meet the requirements
      and are authorized they will also be added to the host table.  No
      new domains will be added before master table is converted to the
      domain style entries.

      In the long run the Internet will become too complex and change
      too fast to keep a master table of all the hosts.  At some point
      the master table will be reduced to simply the entries for the
      domain servers for the top level domains.  By this time all normal
      translation of host names into addresses should take place by
      consulting domain servers.

   Conversion to Servers

      As soon as domain servers become available programs should be
      converted to use them to translate names into addresses.  The
      details of these procedures are given in RFCs 882 and 883.

      The general idea is that a host no longer keeps a complete host
      table but rather makes a request on the domain server each time a
      name must be translated to an address.  The code module in the
      host that implements the protocol to do this is called a
      "resolver".  The resolver may keep a cache of recently translated
      names and addresses for improved performance.

      Many hosts have a library function or system call that is used to
      access the host table to translate names to addresses.  It ought
      to be possible to replace this function or call with the resolver
      module such that most programs would not know which method was
      used to accomplish the name to address translation.








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