Ask HN: why are domain names reversely ordered? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: why are domain names reversely ordered?

#21

Post by riobard » Sat, Oct 17, 2009, 7:52 PM UTC

bajsejohannes wrote: post #8

(Just to clarify...) I know what you mean, but I don't think your question makes sense without comparing it to something. That something would naturally be the path. www.google.com makes as much sense as com.google.www but www.google.com/root/sub/subsub makes less sense than com.google.www/root/sub/subsub or subsub/sub/root/www.google.com Since the latter has consistent increasing or decreasing of specificity, while…

That's exactly what is in my mind! The mismatch of domain name order and path order really bothers me for a while and I just couldn't find a sound reason for that.

For the date format, AFAIK, only English speaking countries use MM/DD/YY, possibly due to the same order in plain writing style, e.g. October 17, 2009. This is completely insane for virtually other parts of the world because logically it's either YY/MM/DD (big to small) or DD/MM/YY (small to big), but NEVER MIXED!

Re: Ask HN: why are domain names reversely ordered?

#22

Post by riobard » Sat, Oct 17, 2009, 7:52 PM UTC

sammcd wrote: post #20

Interview with Tim Berners-Lee where he says he regrets this: http://www.impactlab.com/2006/03/25/interview-with-tim-berne... Looking at what he accomplished, I forgive him.

So this is a mistake ...

Re: Ask HN: why are domain names reversely ordered?

#23

Post by jacquesm » Sat, Oct 17, 2009, 7:56 PM UTC

timf wrote: post #18

Has anyone written a browser plugin that makes it seem like everything is reversed (or 'correct' if that's your view)?

That would be pretty invasive, because plenty of the places where the urls appear are not so easy to get to.

Statusbar, url bar, hovers over links, view source etc.

Re: Ask HN: why are domain names reversely ordered?

#24

Post by jacquesm » Sat, Oct 17, 2009, 7:58 PM UTC

bajsejohannes wrote: post #8

(Just to clarify...) I know what you mean, but I don't think your question makes sense without comparing it to something. That something would naturally be the path. www.google.com makes as much sense as com.google.www but www.google.com/root/sub/subsub makes less sense than com.google.www/root/sub/subsub or subsub/sub/root/www.google.com Since the latter has consistent increasing or decreasing of specificity, while…

The added disadvantage of the current scheme is that it allows all kinds of phishing tricks that would have been a lot harder to get away with if the domain elements would be in the reverse order.

htp://twitter.com.someidiotdomain.info/enteryourpaswordhere

would stand out immediately.

(only one 't' so HN doesn't turn it into a link).

Re: Ask HN: why are domain names reversely ordered?

#25

Post by joshu » Sat, Oct 17, 2009, 8:03 PM UTC

s3graham wrote: post #16

I have no idea. UUCP (Usenet) addresses used to be (are?) "backwards" and ! separated. Maybe some historical references related to that would point you to more info. If I were to guess though, I'd guess email addresses. me@machine being originally valid makes me@tld.machine harder to parse?

They weren't really addresses; it was a series of hosts. It was thus more like a route.

Re: Ask HN: why are domain names reversely ordered?

#26

Post by joshu » Sat, Oct 17, 2009, 8:06 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #9

tokenadult wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is widely considered to be a mistake. Citations, please? I've been able to deal with it over the years.

That you've been 'able to deal with it' is simply because that's what you are used to, but that does not mean that that is better or worse, simply a way of life. Anyway, anything I search for with 'order' and 'domainname' wants to sell me domains, so no citations, but the basic complaint was that it breaks the sequence of a url, where the 'highest' entity should be on the left, and the smallest entity on the right. S…

you'd have to have at least a protocol/host/path separator.

http/com/ibm/www/80/somepath/somefile -> is this referring to http://ibm.com/www... or http://www.ibm.com/80...

Instead, I would imagine it should be something like:

com.ibm:http/80:/somepath

You could even do a lookup to com.ibm and ask for http SRV record to find the actual host to connect to.

Re: Ask HN: why are domain names reversely ordered?

#27

Post by joshu » Sat, Oct 17, 2009, 8:06 PM UTC

com.google:http/80:/path/to/the/file perhaps?

Re: Ask HN: why are domain names reversely ordered?

#28

Post by etherealG » Sat, Oct 17, 2009, 8:11 PM UTC

riobard wrote: post #21

bajsejohannes wrote: post #8

(Just to clarify...) I know what you mean, but I don't think your question makes sense without comparing it to something. That something would naturally be the path. www.google.com makes as much sense as com.google.www but www.google.com/root/sub/subsub makes less sense than com.google.www/root/sub/subsub or subsub/sub/root/www.google.com Since the latter has consistent increasing or decreasing of specificity, while…

That's exactly what is in my mind! The mismatch of domain name order and path order really bothers me for a while and I just couldn't find a sound reason for that. For the date format, AFAIK, only English speaking countries use MM/DD/YY, possibly due to the same order in plain writing style, e.g. October 17, 2009. This is completely insane for virtually other parts of the world because logically it's either YY/MM/DD…

actually, only USA does the rediculous MM/DD/YY. the UK is DD/MM/YY

Re: Ask HN: why are domain names reversely ordered?

#29

Post by sorbits » Sat, Oct 17, 2009, 8:35 PM UTC

aw3c2 wrote: post #4

anigbrowl wrote: post #2

For the same reason your address doesn't go 'USA, California, San Jose, 1297 Fray way'.

And what reason is that?

The most local comes first because the rest is optional. Both in real life (“give that to Peter”) and to some degree for computer network addresses.

You can email ‘peter’ which would be on same machine, ‘peter@arts’ which would be on the ‘arts’ machine on your LAN, or ‘peter@BigCo.com’ which would be on the WAN.

The http protocol takes existing domain names and tags on a path. The domain name system was already in place, so if anything had to be reversed, it would need to be the path, but that would be rather problematic.

Re: Ask HN: why are domain names reversely ordered?

#30

Post by pwmanagerdied » Sat, Oct 17, 2009, 8:57 PM UTC

gabriel-coarna wrote: post #19

bajsejohannes wrote: post #8

(Just to clarify...) I know what you mean, but I don't think your question makes sense without comparing it to something. That something would naturally be the path. www.google.com makes as much sense as com.google.www but www.google.com/root/sub/subsub makes less sense than com.google.www/root/sub/subsub or subsub/sub/root/www.google.com Since the latter has consistent increasing or decreasing of specificity, while…

Actually, com.google.www/root/sub/subsub would make the most sense. The Commercial domain. The Google host/company. The www service/sub-domain. The path.

I don't think that there's anything inherently more sensible about going from least to most specific instead of the opposite, as long as it's consistent.