Building an E-Commerce Trust Infrastructure: SSL Certificates and Online Payment Services

Overview

This white paper describes suggested guidelines for deploying a standard "Wildcard" in Top-Level Domain (TLD) zones. Consistent with RFC 1034, Domain Name System (DNS) wildcards allow a zone administrator to synthesize resource records in response to queries that do not match an otherwise existing domain name. The paper will first describe wildcards as they are specified by the DNS protocol to provide a common understanding of the mechanics for their use. Second, it provides considerations for zone administrators who wish to deploy a DNS wildcard in a top-level domain zone. Specific guidelines for wildcard implementation are noted throughout this paper as numbered paragraphs that start with the letter "G", for "Guideline", followed by a revision number and the guideline number.