One example of a site in South Africa that only validates e-mail addresses which\u00a0are much shorter than specified in RFC 1034 is the First National Bank (FNB) online banking site.<\/p>\n
FNB checks that a TLD is no longer than 7 characters, according to the error message it spits out when you try to use a yourname@yourdomain.capetown e-mail address.<\/p>\n
![\"FNB](\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/FNB-e-mail-validation-TLD-must-be-7-characters-or-less.jpg\")
<\/a>FNB e-mail validation – TLD must be 7 characters or less<\/p><\/div>\n
FNB was asked why it validates e-mail addresses in this way, but the bank did not respond by the time of publication.<\/p>\n
Below is another example: a regular expression currently in use by vBulletin to validate e-mail addresses.<\/p>\n
\n^[a-z0-9.!\\#$%&\\'*+\\-\/=?^_`{|}~]+@([0-9.]+|([^\\s\\'\"<>@,;]+\\.+[a-z]{2,6}))$<\/pre>\n<\/blockquote>\nThe final part of the regular expression states that the TLD must be comprised of between 2 and 6 lower-case (ISO basic Latin) alphabetic characters.<\/p>\n
Why 6 character TLDs?<\/h3>\n
But why limit the length of the TLD in an e-mail address to six characters when RFC 1034 allows for 63 characters?<\/p>\n
The answer to that may lie in the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority\u2019s database of top-level domains, where until at least the end of 2013<\/a>\u00a0the longest Latin script domain was 6 characters long.<\/p>\nAt the start of 2014 a number of new generic top-level domains (gTLDs)<\/a> came online, some of which were longer than the 6 character record previously held by .museum and .travel.<\/p>\nSouth Africa\u2019s dotCities domains are examples of such gTLDs which\u00a0were approved by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.<\/p>\n
dotJoburg, dotCapeTown, and dotDurban domains became available to the general public on a first-come, first-served basis on 4 November 2014.<\/p>\n
Thanks to Tim and morkhans for their assistance on this story.<\/em><\/p>\nMore on dotCities, dotAfrica, and other gTLDs<\/h3>\n
The first .capetown, .joburg, and .durban domains registered<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\nSA domain names: co.za vs web.za, net.za, org.za<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\ndotAfrica dispute causes more delays<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n.xxx domain goes live<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\nICANN sets reveal date for new top level domains<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n