• A student asked why a dot was chosen to separate labels in DNS names presentation.
• The author mumbled some reasons but didn't know for sure and later looked through RFC 1034 and RFC 1035 without finding an answer.
• Hans suggested it might be about "connecting the dots" but it wasn't the case.
• Ed referred to dots in hostnames and old host.txt files from 1988 and 1985 show the use of dots.
• Jeroen suggested contacting Paul Mockapetris who invented the DNS and he created an account on the Fediverse.
• Martin pointed out that the 1983 RFC 881 already accepts the dot and the file hosts.txt also contains a dot.
• Florian brought a comparison to quad dotted decimal IP addresses and the 1981 RFC 780 might be the first mention.
• Paul W. said the dot is small, clear and commonly used as a divider.
• Later, Guillaume-Jean suggested a possible "flash of genius" that it might come from VMS using "·" as a path separator.
• Nine years ago, there was a similar research on why the comment character in a DNS zone master file is a semicolon.