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ICANN Proposes .INTERNAL for Internal Use Only

posted by hubie on Thursday February 01 2024, @12:23PM   Printer-friendly
from the Here-Here dept.

https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/29/icann_internal_tld/

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has proposed creating a new top-level domain (TLD) and never allowing it to be delegated in the global domain name system (DNS) root.

The proposed TLD is .INTERNAL and, as the name implies, it's intended for internal use only. The idea is that .INTERNAL could take on the same role as the 192.168.x.x IPv4 bloc – available for internal use but never plumbed into DNS or other infrastructure that would enable it to be accessed from the open internet.

ICANN's Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) advised the development of such a TLD in 2020. It noted at the time that "many enterprises and device vendors make ad hoc use of TLDs that are not present in the root zone when they intend the name for private use only. This usage is uncoordinated and can cause harm to Internet users" – in part by forcing DNS servers to handle, and reject, queries for domains only used internally.

[...] ICANN's board still has to sign off the creation of .INTERNAL. But if you want to get ahead of the pack, there's nothing stopping you. Indeed, some outfits already use ad hoc TLDs. Open source Wi-Fi firmware project WRT has used .LAN, and networking vendor D-Link has employed .dlink.

There's nothing stopping you doing likewise.

But as ICANN's proposal for the idea noted: "Operators who choose to use private namespaces of the kind proposed in this document should understand the potential for that decision to have corresponding costs, and that those costs might well be avoided by choosing instead to use a sub-domain of their own publicly registered domain name."

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by WizardFusion on Thursday February 01 2024, @02:06PM (12 children)

    by WizardFusion (498) on Thursday February 01 2024, @02:06PM (#1342629) Journal

    They could have used a shorter name like .INT for example.

    .LAN, .HOME, .LOCAL could also have been proposed.

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  • (Score: 4, Funny) by DannyB on Thursday February 01 2024, @02:49PM (4 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday February 01 2024, @02:49PM (#1342638) Journal

    They could have used a shorter name that has emoji characters.

    --
    The Centauri traded Earth jump gate technology in exchange for our superior hair mousse formulas.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 01 2024, @02:56PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 01 2024, @02:56PM (#1342645)

    They could have also used .ANAL, that's LAN with an A.

    • (Score: 2) by VLM on Friday February 02 2024, @12:53PM

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Friday February 02 2024, @12:53PM (#1342775)

      Its "LAN A" read backwards because its for reverse DNS.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by hendrikboom on Thursday February 01 2024, @07:07PM

    by hendrikboom (1125) on Thursday February 01 2024, @07:07PM (#1342680) Homepage Journal

    It seems that .local already has a meaning. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.local [wikipedia.org]

    But how it differs from the proposed .internal escapes me.

  • (Score: 5, Touché) by zocalo on Thursday February 01 2024, @09:41PM

    by zocalo (302) on Thursday February 01 2024, @09:41PM (#1342703)
    You don't see it much, but .INT is one of the original gTLDs (actually created in the second RFC on the matter in 1988 at the request of NATO) from before money trumped sense and anyone with enough money could have their custom gTLD added to the root servers. I think the 150 or so - yes, it really is that few - international organisations that use .INT might be a bit upset if it suddenly gets used for something else.
    --
    UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!

  • (Score: 2) by Unixnut on Thursday February 01 2024, @10:01PM

    by Unixnut (5779) on Thursday February 01 2024, @10:01PM (#1342707)

    I'd vote to use ".loc" for "local". Most TLDs are 3 characters or less, why would one that is reserved for internal machines (and therefore the one users will type the most often) be the longest?

  • (Score: 2) by theluggage on Friday February 02 2024, @10:48AM

    by theluggage (1797) on Friday February 02 2024, @10:48AM (#1342770)

    ….or all of those, maybe they could do a bit of research and find the top 5 currently in use as internal tlds - any of which would be dumb to use as public tlds.

  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Friday February 02 2024, @12:55PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Friday February 02 2024, @12:55PM (#1342776)

    TLD name should be .int_u32 for ipv4 and .int_u128 for ipv6 purposes.

    I can do DNS jokes all day long. They're like the "Dad Jokes" of IT work.