RFC 897 (rfc897) - Page 2 of 8

Domain name system implementation schedule

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:  Postel@USC-ISIF.ARPA  or  Kahn@USC-ISIA.DDN

         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