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Why domain names are backwards? [closed]

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I 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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