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Is there a limit for number of subdomains like "*.domain.com"?

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this should probably be on serverfault.com – Taylor Leese Sep 15 '09 at 6:57
The only limit is when your name server runs out of memory. It's the same as the limit for the number of subdomains like *.com: 253 characters, total. – derobert Sep 15 '09 at 7:01
Are you asking about no of subdomains that can be created for particular domain ? – Mahin Sep 15 '09 at 7:01
ops.ietf.org/lists/namedroppers/namedroppers.2003/msg00964.html if you want a reference – derobert Sep 15 '09 at 7:03
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2 Answers

up vote 7 down vote

The limit would be dependant upon the DNS server, not the webserver. BIND allows for 16777216. Microsoft DNS is said to be stable to 20K objects per zone. Regardless, Peter is correct. It is too large to matter unless you are doing something non-standard.

To clarify, the longest domain name possible is 255 characters with no label (peice between dots) to be longer than 63 characters per DNS spec.

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You can easily do *.domain.com IN A 10.11.12.13 and then the limit is on the webserver. If you're going to have millions, this is probably the only sane way (e.g., think of a site that lets you set up blogname.site.come, for example) – derobert Sep 15 '09 at 7:06
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up vote 0 down vote

The only limit is the length of the URL - the subdomains are interpreted by the webserver. (And that means there's no relevant limit, by the way - the number is just too huge.)

EDIT: the maximum length of the URL is 253 octets, or 253 characters if using ascii. That's plenty :)

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then what's the limit of the length of the URL? – Shore Sep 15 '09 at 6:58
It's starting to sound like Homework, some random trivia question thrown by a bored prof. – Jon Limjap Sep 15 '09 at 7:03
It is a DNS limitation. vhosts are not relevant to his question. – Yannick M. Sep 15 '09 at 7:04
Depends on your browser, the server, etc. IE has a limit of 2083 characters in the URL, afair. RFC 2616 advises not to rely on URIs above the length of 255 characters. – Joey Sep 15 '09 at 7:06
-1 for the strange reasoning 253 octets = 2024 characters :-( – bortzmeyer Sep 15 '09 at 7:25
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