Question

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.

http://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: [phone]

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 more 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.

Answer 1

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