Underscores in Polycom hostnames

[Anonymous]

Why does Polycom use an underscore in the hostnames of phones when this is in violation of the intention of several RFCs?

It causes bind logs to fill with such as: zone somecompany.com/IN: Polycom_XXXXXXXXXXXX.somecompany.com/A: bad owner name (check-names)

See also: DNS and BIND by O'Reilly

[SteffenBaierUK]

Hello Chris_,

welcome back to the Polycom Community.

The extended host name syntax is a UTF-8 [RFC3629]  string so therefore we have always been using this type of string.

The "older" RFC 1035 does not allow the usage of underscore but again we hardly ever have a customer complain about this.

The FAQ contains:

Aug 10, 2016 Question:Can I change the Hostname of my Polycom phone?

Explanation:Please check => here <=

You can simply manually change this.

If this is a big issue for your organisation simply raise a feature request:

Jan 03, 2013 Question: How can I request a change to the current Polycom SIP / UC Software?

Resolution: Please check => here <=

Please ensure to provide some feedback if this reply has helped you so other users can profit from your experience.

Best Regards

Steffen Baier

Polycom Global Services

[Anonymous]

Hi Steffan,

Thanks for your time.

I had read the FAQ on changing the hostname. That is where I began to wonder why Polycom was not RFC compliant. That particular FAQ supports that propsition that underscores are not acceptable in host names by reference to the older RFC 1035, but then goes on to give an example which uses them. That seems confusing at best.

Is there a way to include the MAC in the modfied hostname?

[Anonymous]

This default - non-the-less causes problems:

If I run the bind9 command to check a zone file -

# named-checkzone -j example.network db.example.network

it returns errors:

db.example.network:43: Polycom_0004f21afee8.example.network: bad owner name (check-names)

RFC3629 does not apply to hostnames

The correct RFC is https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1123

Also there is RFC is rfc1178 which states:

    Don't use non-alphanumeric characters in a name.

         Your own computer may handle punctuation or control characters
         in a name, but most others do not.  If you ever expect to
         connect your computer to a heterogeneous network, you can count
         on a variety of interpretations of non-alphanumeric characters
         in names.  Network conventions on this are surprisingly
         nonstandard.

The 'Extended Host Name' standard is a Microsoft only standard that has not been adopted by anyone else - (and has opened several security problems.)

also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostname#Restrictions_on_valid_hostnames

Which states: Labels such as 2600 and 3abc may be used in hostnames, but -hi-,_hi_ and *hi* are invalid.

As many of your customers are running phone-switches on Linux systems - you should probably rethink what you are doing.

[SteffenBaierUK]

Hello xtronics,

welcome to the Polycom Community.

I have been with Polycom for nearly 10 years and in this time , whilst we sold millions of phones, two customers complained about this.

I provided the original poster with a workaround.

In addition the community's VoIP FAQ contains this post here:

Jan 03, 2013 Question: How can I request a change to the current Polycom SIP / UC Software?

Resolution: Please check => here <=

So if you have a business case follow the above.

Please ensure to provide some feedback if this reply has helped you so other users can profit from your experience.

Best Regards

Steffen Baier

Polycom Global Services