draft-lewis-domain-names has been presented for publication as an Informational
RFC on the Independent Stream.
This document presents an overview (almost a literature search) of RFCs that
discuss Domain Names and the DNS with a view to helping answer the question "Is
the concept of Domain Names owned by the DNS protocol or does the DNS protocol
exist to support the concept of Domain Names?"
The current text is an opinion piece from the author, and clearly states that
it does not represent the consensus opinion of the IETF. The document
explicitly does not attempt to provide a definition of the term "Domain Name",
while recognising that it would be useful if such a definition existed.
The document has been with the ISE for two years and was already at revision
-08 when it arrived. Since then it has had review and discussion to help
improve its structure and its technical content. Those reviews were protracted
and reproducing them here is not practical. Reviewers included, John Klensin,
Brian Carpenter, Nevil Brownlee, Lixia Zhang, Ralph Droms, and the ISE.
If this were to be published as IETF work, I believe it would need considerably
more review, and possibly more content. But as a personal opinion piece, I do
not believe it is factually incorrect, and so it is suitable for posting.