Hostmaster field
The second field of an SOA record. Informational only, it holds the E-Mail address of the person responsible for maintaining the zone. Originally formatted as if it was a Hostname, the @ symbol was an invalid character. The @ symbol was replaced by a ". ", and any "." preceding the "@" was replaced by "\.". Examples:
| Email address: |
Hostmaster field: |
| hostmaster@foo.com |
hostmaster.foo.com. |
| host.master@foo.com |
host\.master.foo.com. |
Relatively recently, the rules were changed to permit arbitrary characters in the Hostmaster field. Thus, the above rule is no longer necessary; however, it is still used by the majority of hostmasters, and it is assumed by many DNS validators.
See also:
SOA Record
