Underscores in hostnames

Off-topic
1

I’ve been wondering about this for a while, but with manic_mark posting a video it actually presented a problem…

The video was at www.manic_mark.unicyclist.com. When I try this, the university proxy (squid) whinges about the underscore in the hostname. I had to download the video using wget on a Solaris server with a direct connection.

Should they have underscores in? After a quick look I can’t find any mention of underscores in a relevant RFC, and I can’t think of a reason as to why underscores are evil…

Phil

2

Underscores are no valid characters in hostnames.
same for nummeric hostnames, so 444.unicyclist.com would be invalid, but that would work on all machines except old BeOS.
For that reason I (.nl registrar) cannot claim 128.nl, very tricky I managed to get www.128.nl.

The future is gonne be much more mess: http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/ipv6mess.html
I’m now playing arround with the protocol, but guess what happens if you try to access localhost with a(ny?) browser: http://::1

Leo Vandewoestijne
http://www.unixcycle.com/
http://www.ripe.net/perl/whois?UNICYCLE-MNT

3

Re: Underscores in hostnames

forgott

it somewhere described (in a RFC) as a-z 1-0 and -

4

Ah, I see… that makes sense. Presumably while they’re not allowed enforcing it is very lax… this is the first time I’ve noticed not being able to get to a host with an underscore in; it works every other way I can think of.

Thanks,

Phil

5

yes, it’s most of the times the client (or cheapo routers in between). Try these:

http://whatever_something.servermonitor.org/
should work, it does with me

http://3639261710/
suprise

but since many spammers used this to hide themselfs.
like http://www.sex.com%401360083040
microsoft disabled this in MSIE, however it still works using:
ping 3570197104
on the DOS-command prompt.

Oh ya, not to make you worrieng, about IPv6,
that latest satelite (got many secret pictures) of NASA,
is (since a “low” budget of $13,000,000.-) completely managed using FTP and SSH…
Hope the deamons come up after switching over.