[Mimedefang] OT: www. and "lazy users"

[Kenneth Porter]

On Monday, May 15, 2006 1:04 PM -0500 Ben Kamen <bkamen at benjammin.net> 
wrote:

> As a sidenote, I do remember reading (although I can't remember where)
> that it's considered bad form to assign an IP address to a domain.
>
> IP's should be assigned to hosts...
> Anyone else ever read that? I can't remember if it was an RFC or what.

Common misconception. A domain can also be a host. Any internal node in the 
DNS tree can be a host (ie. have an A record or any other set of records).

The reason "www" was used for web hosts was because there was no mechanism 
like the MX record for mail to direct a web client to a specific host for a 
domain. Such a mechanism now exists (SRV records) but no browsers use them. 
(I know it's in Mozilla's Bugzilla as an RFE.) The "www" was added in case 
one wanted to split services to different hosts over time.

On my domains the domain name points to the canonical web host and the www 
subdomain is a redirect to the unadorned name. I discourage the use of 
"www".

<http://no-www.org/>

<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14328>

Not typing the "www" is no lazier than not typing the implied ":80".