Why domain names are backwards? [closed]
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Closed 12 years ago.
Improve this questionI realize that this question might not make sense to some, but I was just curious of why the domain names built starting from most specific and ending with most global identifier.
www.google.com
[most specific].[2nd level].[top level]
All other tree traversing formats, syntax conventions and identifiers (at least ones that I'm aware of) start with the most global namespace and end with the most specific node.
- Filepath: /root/subfolder1/subfolder2/file
- Component: com.android.notepad.NoteEditor
- Object: rootObject.subObject1.subObject2
- IP: 1.2.3.4
- Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.help
- Phone numbers: +1-555-555-1234
So I guess my question is whether there is any productive reason behind this special treatment of domain names by specifying them backwards, or it was just decided by throwing a coin?
EDIT:
More examples of forward conventions:
- Address (Russia): Country, City, Street House/Apt
- Date (Japanese and DB): YYYY-MM-DD
- Time: HH:mm:ss
Examples of Backward conventions:
- Address (US): Street House/Apt, City, State, Country
- Date (European): DD/MM/YYYY
The most specific first makes sense when addressing is identifiable easier and happens more often on local scale.
Mixed order:
- Date (US): MM/DD/YYYY - While Month gives m开发者_运维问答ore meaning to the Day, the Year is moved to be the last, because it less needed to uniquely identify the date in day-to-day use.
Take a look at the book "Where the Wizards Stay Up Late" for details on how host names came to be. It's really more like a coin flip. Paul Vixie, the godfather of DNS and BIND is still alive (and I think in SoCal), he could probably answer it better than I.
I often thought of writing a browser addon that allows left to right hierarchical URLs in place of the current right to left.
P
Reading through these:
- http://www.livinginternet.com/i/iw_dns_history.htm
- http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc819.txt
It seems like it was just following the convention.
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