Proposed top-level domain string for private use: ".internal"

https://www.icann.org/en/public-comment/proceeding/proposed-top-level-domain-string-for-private-use-24-01-2024

by zacwest • 2 years ago

323 229 2 years ago

icann.org

NoZebra120vClip3• 2 years ago

Other currently reserved TLDs:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-level_domain#Reserved_doma...

gnabgib2• 2 years ago

.example (for examples), .invalid (invalid domains), .localhost (avoids conflict with localhost hostname), .test (for tests), .local (link-local names), .onion (for Tor)

jchw2• 2 years ago

Also good to reserve localhost since some system resolvers will actually resolve any subdomain of localhost as 127.0.0.1. (I think systemd-resolved does, but I know for sure glibc NSS with the nss-myhostname module does.)

webstrand• 2 years ago

what about .localdomain? I haven't been able to find anything standards-wise about it.

AndyMcConachie• 2 years ago

The IANA link is probably better.

https://www.iana.org/assignments/special-use-domain-names/sp...

vmurthy• 2 years ago

From the article

“ICANN has picked the TLD string that it will recommend for safe use behind corporate firewalls on the basis that it will never, ever be delegated.

The string is .internal, and the choice is now open for public comment”

Saved you a click :)

gnabgib2• 2 years ago

ICANN: [Proposed Top-Level Domain String for Private Use](https://www.icann.org/en/public-comment/proceeding/proposed-...) "The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) has made a provisional determination that “.INTERNAL” should be reserved for private-use and internal network applications(...)"

... possibly a better link.

Terr_• 2 years ago

At last (or at least soon) I can stop using the special reserved example.com for things. :p

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Example.com

p1mrx4• 2 years ago

Eh, .internal is fine, but it's 8 characters to type. I'll probably keep using .lan until someone else takes it.

ahmedfromtunis• 2 years ago

You still can provide your input on the matter till march; so it's not too late (yet): https://www.icann.org/en/public-comment/proceeding/proposed-...

p1mrx4• 2 years ago

The problem is that .internal is the bureaucratically correct answer, and not all internal networks are LANs.

Maybe they can reserve both .interNAL and its convenient abbreviation, which just happens to be written backwards because it's DNS.

junon• 2 years ago

Not all use cases for .internal involve a LAN though.

deng3• 2 years ago

Wait, so all the '.io' domains are actually registered by people operating in the British Indian Ocean Territory?

Seriously, .lan is just a convention. For all I care they could come up with any three-letter thingy, as long as there's a mutual understanding that no global DNS will ever resolve it.

p1mrx4• 2 years ago

Per my other comment, we could define LAN to be the abbreviation for interNAL, because INT was already taken.

LeoPanthera• 2 years ago

Also worth noting that "home.arpa" is already reserved and specifically designed for residential use. It will never conflict with anything.

Mountain_Skies• 2 years ago

And is nine characters long, which is cumbersome for those using it in an IOT context where data entry is often not straightforward.

fastball• 2 years ago

Huh?

loktarogar• 2 years ago

so, exactly the same as .internal

scraplab• 2 years ago

I use this, mostly for the .arpa vibes.

sph• 2 years ago

I avoid it for the same reason. The ARPANET branch of the US Department of Defense feels anything but home to me.

ahoka3• 2 years ago

I use it and it’s very confusing for my guests.

matt3210• 2 years ago

.local already does this

CountSessine• 2 years ago

.local is used by mdns so your .local machines can conflict with discoverable devices and services. I guess they wanted something that wouldn't conflict?

miles2• 2 years ago

.local already does this

Best to avoid it for that purpose:

1. "Using '.local' as a private top-level domain conflicts with Multicast DNS and may cause problems for users." https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6762#appendix-G

2. ".local has since been designated for use in link-local networking, in applications of multicast DNS (mDNS) and zero-configuration networking (zeroconf) so that DNS service may be established without local installations of conventional DNS infrastructure on local area networks." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.local

3. "PSA: Don't use domain.local" https://old.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/a9sfks/psa_dont_u...

4. "Why using .local as your domain name extension is a BAD idea!" https://community.veeam.com/blogs-and-podcasts-57/why-using-...

axytol• 2 years ago

That's a good list of reasons, however it seems the biggest concern is if you run a dedicated DNS service on your network.

For a simple home network setup, as long as naming conflicts can be managed, it looks like mDNS is quite handy.

On a side note, I find .local to be best suited for the purpose, since from the language perspective it's easier on international users than .localhost

The newly proposed .internal comes close, but .local still looks more semantically flexible or maybe this is a cognitive bias of mine.

Brian_K_White• 2 years ago

Only to the same extent that .test and .example do, which is to say it does not.

dang• 2 years ago

Url changed from https://domainincite.com/29381-icann-picks-the-domain-it-wil..., which points to this.

amne• 2 years ago

.intranet ?

rickette• 2 years ago

host.docker.internal

w-ll• 2 years ago

since ".dev" was hijacked ive been using ".lan" and ".lab"

mongol• 2 years ago

I also use .lan

8organicbits6• 2 years ago

To be fair, .dev TLD seems to imply developer or development. .internal is a broader name and even if .dev was an option it probably wouldn't be selected.

INTPenis4• 2 years ago

This makes me think of some AD best practices I read a long time ago. One of the practices was to never use made up local TLDs like .internal or .local because some day they might be real and get picked up by someone.

Essentially you should always use a domain you control both outside and inside, like a regular gTLD or ccTLD.

Pretty much every single company I've worked for with AD has broken this rule.

NoZebra120vClip3• 2 years ago

The last time I set up DNS at home, I decided to use a fictitious and undelegated subdomain under my ISP's domain name. This structure did not create any "extra" problems in the short term.

But I suppose that I still ran the risk that the subdomain could "become real", or draw attention from security admins, or I would change ISPs.

justusthane2• 2 years ago

draw attention from security admins

How? I’m not saying this is great practice — there are certainly better options — but no one outside your network will ever know about it. It also won’t matter if you switch ISPs.

blowski• 2 years ago

I saw a successful attack on a .dev domain doing exactly this. Links on PCs worked correctly, but phones showed a scam site, so emailed links were attacked.

It was hard to fix because they couldn’t get the spoofed domain, and there were so many copies of bad links everywhere.

gerwim• 2 years ago

Another fun fact about .dev which I recently found out while working on a side project:

You NEED to use https when visiting any .dev domain. Google has put it on the HSTS preload list.

It took me a while to find out why my browser kept redirecting me to https when I wanted to use http (local development). Curl worked fine…

malinens• 2 years ago

We used .dev before google registered it so we migrated to another paid domain so we don't need to pay huge amount per year to google

maxcoder4• 2 years ago

To this day this story still blows my mind:

Register a TLD which is informal standard for development websites and environments (.dev)
Charge an excessive amount of money for it
To make sure you ruin everyone's day, put it on a HSTS preload list
Refuse to elaborate

deltaburnt• 2 years ago

Just my person experience, but I got my relatively uncommon name on .dev for $12/yr so I'm pretty happy with that. While the situation worked in my favor, I agree .dev probably should have been the official internal only TLD.

argiope• 2 years ago

I understand that .home.arpa is the standard TLD for home networks as per RFC-8375

https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8375

badgersnake• 2 years ago

I tried to use that on my Turris Omnia and it broke a lot of things. I ended up using .lan

neop1x• 2 years ago

Yeah, but it's basically a domain as opposed to a TLD and it's hugely impractical to work with. We need a short TLD like .lan for that!

keeperofdakeys• 2 years ago

The ".local" domain specifically is a bad choice as many platforms use MDNS instead of DNS for looking up those names. Leading to issues resolving names on some client devices. It's also very common due to Microsoft suggesting it as best practise in the early days of AD.

rzzzt4• 2 years ago

I'm wondering about one thing, now that I've read a few "may cause issues" and "is used for mDNS" replies: what the F is mDNS actually doing in the background?

Is it really going to assign "lancelot.roundtable.local" to my washing machine on a whim, which leaves the microwave unresolvable?

Can't I instruct the mDNS server running on my machine to respond to a particular name ending in .local?

Can't eg. dnsmasq insert itself into a conversation on 224.0.0.251 saying "Let me answer this question" for certain queries?

HackerThemAll3• 2 years ago

Thank Apple for this half-baked bullsh*t.

Hendrikto• 2 years ago

made up local TLDs like .internal or .local

.local actually exists. It is used for mDNS.

apexalpha• 2 years ago

TIL, woops!

I use this for all my internal domains, haha. I guess this is why we need a proper tld like this.

baobun2• 2 years ago

The following TLDs are fine and reserved:

                .test
                .example
                .invalid
              .localhost

RFC2606 (https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2606)

deng3• 2 years ago

Yes, but who would want .test, .example or .invalid as an internal domain? Also, they are too long (yes, that matters).

What I've seen lately is '.int' for internal usage. While this is a valid TLD, it is only for international organizations, and it is not possible for "normal" people to reserve a domain with that TLD, so unless your company is called "WHO" or similar, you shouldn't have any problems...

codetrotter• 2 years ago

Test is best used in temporary setups that you use for testing things.

Example is best used in documentation only.

Invalid is weird and confusing.

Localhost as a TLD should still be on the machine itself. Keeping in mind that 127.0.0.1 is not the only loopback address at your disposal – you have the whole /8. You could bind different services on different loopback ip addresses and then assign host names in the .localhost tld to those.

So for example you could run different Wordpress instances locally on your machine on ips 127.87.80.2, 127.87.80.3, and 127.87.80.4, so that each can run on port 80 without colliding with one another, and without resorting to having non-80/non-443 ports.

Then have corresponding entries in /etc/hosts

127.87.80.2 dogblog.localhost

127.87.80.3 cooking.localhost

127.87.80.4 travel.localhost

And use those domains to access each of those from your browser. Then you don’t even need to keep all services behind the same Nginx instance for example, as you otherwise would do if you had different domain names but was using 127.0.0.1 and port 80 for all of them.

Whereas having the localhost tld refer to hosts elsewhere on a physical network.. that’s about equally as weird and confusing as “invalid”.

CranberryDefuse• 2 years ago

They are reserved for Testing, & Documentation Examples.

You should not used them in production.

layer8• 2 years ago

The only one of those appropriate for accessing actual hosts would be .test, and obviously using .test for non-testing purposes would also not be appropriate.

globular-toast3• 2 years ago

My work used .local which means mDNS and service discovery etc doesn't work. Very annoying. What are they teaching these network admins? Why don't they even know what a domain name is for?

mtillman• 2 years ago

Similar issue with modern devs that don’t know what a page of memory is.

HackerThemAll3• 2 years ago

Thank Apple for designing the protocol the Apple way, that is being not interoperable with the world.

Uvix• 2 years ago

Even if they know now, that doesn’t mean they knew when setting up the AD domain back in 2000.

patmorgan234• 2 years ago

Microsoft's recommendation in the early 2000's was to use .local

maccard2• 2 years ago

Essentially you should always use a domain you control both outside and inside, like a regular gTLD or ccTLD.

Yep. We use two domains - everything on A is "public" and everything on "B" is internal. The root of "B" is a static page on AWS that is gated behind our VPN so it serves as a quick "can you hit our infra at all" check when troubleshooting, and catches the people who are convinced they've enabled their VPN.

One thing to note here that we haven't solved (We've only got two "infra" people, we're a small company) is how you handle an internal portal to an external service. If our public domain is maccard.com and private is maccard.dev, where does internal-admin.maccard.com _actually_ live? Our solve for this is we have an internal.maccard.com for this very specific use case, but I'd much rather it was admin.live.maccard.dev

justusthane2• 2 years ago

We just use the same domain internally and externally with split DNS. Works fine.

solatic• 2 years ago

Devil's advocate: using an Internet-public domain for internal purposes will publicly expose your internal hostnames if you enable DNSSEC on the Internet-public domain. This is a problem if you're required to enable DNSSEC, e.g. for FedRAMP compliance.

The number of cases where this is actually a legitimate concern, IMO, is extremely small, and I'm personally of the opinion that using Internet-public domains for internal purposes is generally fine. But it's still important to point out that the number of cases is not zero.

akdev1l• 2 years ago

You can use a public domain but a local/private DNS server

INTPenis4• 2 years ago

I believe the advice about using a TLD you control outside and inside is mostly to prevent takeover on the outside that could affect the inside.

But you can still have completely separate DNS for the inside. Using a shared DB for both would probably be recommended to avoid conflicts.

eqvinox8• 2 years ago

expose your internal hostnames if you enable DNSSEC

Zone content enumeration in DNSsec was fixed by NSEC3 records (RFC5155, March 2008)

tptacek2• 2 years ago

Every security auditor in ever regs regime will flag zone transfers.

tambourine_man2• 2 years ago

This happened with the .dev situation. I switched to .d ever since. I’ve read somewhere that new TLDs are required to be at least 2 letters so I guess I’m safe this way.

patmorgan234• 2 years ago

You can use .lan, . domain, .home, .host or .Corp as they are all reserved TLDs

chaz6• 2 years ago

I joke that I would use .icannsux because there is just no way they would assign it.

lifthrasiir5• 2 years ago

`.sucks` is a real TLD though, so you can register `icann.sucks` today!

INTPenis4• 2 years ago

Hah that's a funny idea that you'd be relatively safer if you used something outrageous like godsavethequeen or crappymcfartlegs. But you never know what promotional TLDs are created in the future. Or how free the process might become, as remembering names becomes less and less important to a majority of internet users.

irusensei2• 2 years ago

The .local bullshit gate so much headache. When I was working on Ubuntu based POS systems we had to make sure avahi or any kind of mDNS wouldn’t be installed. It became a running joke “we got another MS MVP here” every time we had issues with a client with a .local domain.

drbawb• 2 years ago

Pretty much every single company I've worked for with AD has broken this rule.

It's a lot better now. Ever since companies started moving from on-prem Exchange to O365 in droves I've noticed that most orgs I work with (painfully) updated their domain so their user principals align w/ their O365 mailbox.

There's only one customer I have that still uses a ".local" domain for AD, and they got bought out last year. (By an org that uses a real FQDN.)

sokoloff• 2 years ago

I worked for Merrill Lynch around 2000 and they used other people’s public IP addresses on their (theoretically) internal network.

Naturally, this went terribly as soon any of their sites had their own connection to the internet.

carterschonwald• 2 years ago

I’ve been told that this is still a problem at large organizations in that industry.

wolverine8762• 2 years ago

Why not use the designated private IP ranges? There are more than enough addresses there, unless it's some crazy application with millions of instances each needing an IP. But then use IPv6?

kjs3• 2 years ago

I had a very large client that was squatting someone else's address space in the pre-WWW days. When I pointed out the problem this would eventually cause and that RFC1918 was the (then) answer, the CTO said "no one here needs to get to the University of Tokyo". I was long gone by the time the SHTF.

I had another much smaller client who's leadership insisted that because they were using it the owners would have to just have to not use it. Some sort of imagined IP squatters rights, I guess. I doubt the DoD accommodated them.

yencabulator4• 2 years ago

I've sold IT stuff to a city that had some expensive consultants configure their ActiveDirectory as <name_of_city>.ad, as in the ccTLD of Andorra.

bitcurious• 2 years ago

We had a bunch of .dev urls break thanks to google and our lack of foresight.

dmd• 2 years ago

My friends and I own the domain name “dev.host” and you wouldn’t believe the traffic we get.

bsimpson• 2 years ago

AD?

[edit] Oh, Active Directory

loupol• 2 years ago

I think I would have preferred .intra (Unless it's already used somehow ?).

Just 5 letters is less annoying to type repeatedly than .internal, while still conveying the overall purpose relatively well.

It might just be my laziness talking though.

steve_adams_86• 2 years ago

I liked this idea at first, but the more I think about it the less I'm sure it works. Intra seems like a word which denotes physical boundaries to be within. It prefixes words like intramural, intramuscular, and intracellular. It's used for intranet as well, and while this usage of the prefix works, it has more broad use-cases than that. On the other hand, internal seems very clear and direct, and might suit a more digital, organizational context with less of a physical or spatial aspect to it.

Also, since intra is typically used as a prefix, it seems strange to use it bare. People familiar with intranets will probably make (or assume) the connection, but others might find it unclear while "internal" would likely not be.

Even so, I do prefer .intra for selfish reasons.

deng3• 2 years ago

You are not alone. Typing matters, 'internal' is just too long. I'd much prefer if they for instance would reserve '.lan' for internal usage.

Terretta• 2 years ago

so, for example, an entirely internal zero trust network across all locations, should be .lan and not .internal?

.lan is so "back to office"

josho2• 2 years ago

Isn’t it possible to setup a default search domain. So most places you could just type something like https://site/ and your dns config knows to look for https://site.internal/

hannob• 2 years ago

Counterpoint: .internal is much easier to understrand, .intra sounds like a reference to "intranet" as opposed to "internet". That's terminology networking people would use, but .internal is likely something both non-tech and tech people would intuitively understand.

lifthrasiir5• 2 years ago

I don't think `.internal` to be intuitively understandable either. In spite of other shortcomings, `.home` and `.corp` convey its private-use natures much better than `.internal`. (But they won't be suitable for anything other than that.)

DiabloD3• 2 years ago

I use .localnet to go with the name of localhost, as this has been suggested by ... one of the RFCs, but I can't remember which.

If .localnet ever becomes a real TLD, well, I'm pretty sure the entire global infra is going to collapse and not necessarily be my problem.

Edit: And to be clear, I'm doing this for my house, not some enterprise setup; using real actual FQDN for internal services at a company, especially one that is multi-site/cloud, is still the best advice.

erik_seaberg• 2 years ago

I’ve seen localhost.localdomain often but I’m not sure whether it’s actually reserved.

mezzode• 2 years ago

As others have mentioned there already is the ".home.arpa" TLD but I definitely think ".internal" is a step up in terms of clarity. That said, for my internal network I just put things under a subdomain of a domain I own so I can use HTTPS with a proper SSL cert

MaxBarraclough• 2 years ago

That seems like a great way to go - get it signed the normal way and TLS will 'just work', no messing about configuring trust on your devices.

Will this be possible with .internal ?

8organicbits6• 2 years ago

The TLS cert will either be self-signed or you'll need to run a private CA. A public CA won't issue you a cert as you can't own any .internal domain.

ahoka3• 2 years ago

You can use a proper certificate with any domain you like.

eqvinox8• 2 years ago

except not with .home.arpa .internal .lan or whatever else, since you don't have "domain ownership"

eqvinox8• 2 years ago

I just put things under a subdomain of a domain I own

Yup, same here. Great in combination with ACME DNS-01 so your DNS server can request all those certificates and then push them out to your devices. (Otherwise the hostnames need to be externally accessible, which means either exposing the internal devices, or mucking around with split-view DNS. The former is a terrible idea, the latter is also DNS server complexity and worse than doing DNS-01 IMHO.)

mdaniel2• 2 years ago

IMHO if you are already doing some process of "push certificates out to devices," you'll likely be much happier with getting a wildcard cert using DNS-01 and change that update process from "all devices all the time according to their schedule" over to "all devices but once every 80 days"

I do appreciate the threat model of one device getting owned leaks all your certs but security is always a trade-off between security and convenience. It also lowers the load upon the LE servers, for what that's worth

lifthrasiir5• 2 years ago

Another possibility is `.zz`, which technically can be a ccTLD but it's a user-assigned ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code, and its last position makes extremely impossible for it to be repurposed as a valid code even in that setting. In comparison, some user-assigned codes like `XZ` are often used for temporary country codes so `.xz` would be less appropriate.

It seems that ICANN did consider this choice among others, but reject for the lack of meaningfulness:

The qualitative assessment on the latter properties was performed in the six United Nations languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish). [...] Many candidate strings were deemed unsuitable due to their lack of meaningfulness. [...] In this evaluation, only two candidates emerged as broadly meeting the assessment criteria across the assessed languages. These were “INTERNAL” and “PRIVATE”. Some weaknesses were identified for both of these candidates. [...]

I wonder if this means that they only scored the highest among others and all candidate strings were indeed unsuitable, but that they had to pick one anyway. I'm not even sure that laypersons can relate `.internal` with the stuff for "internal" uses.

unclet• 2 years ago

I opposite to use the `.zz`. Instead, I think this should be assigned as new TLD domain for all people live in any country, because it is a reserved ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code, and will not be assigned to any country. It's the best convenient TLD for human on the earth.

matrss• 2 years ago

I consider .xyz to be a good TLD for that purpose already, but .zz would be nice too.

lifthrasiir5• 2 years ago

There is not much to gain from having a new two-letter gTLD instead of existing all-purpose three-letter TLDs (say, `.com`, `.ooo` or `.xyz`). Especially given that every TLD needs a registry, and `.zz` would be a particularly extra-special gTLD that needs a special procedure to select the registry. Better to make it a reserved TLD if it is ever going to be used.

fmajid• 2 years ago

This may generate confusion with the .int gTLD used for international organizations like UN agencies.

denkmoon2• 2 years ago

.lan thanks.

1vuio0pswjnm76• 2 years ago

Personally I use the HOSTS file instead of DNS.

Alternatively I use a map file loaded into the memory of a loopback-bound forward proxy. No DNS.

I also use loopback-bound authoritative DNS to a limited extent as it provides wildcards.

There are ways to avoid using DNS.

Most web developers do not understand DNS, or at least dislike it, and some get annoyed by the HOSTS file. Quite funny. But I'm not a developer. DNS is something I understand well enough, I like it, and, in addition, the HOSTS file is useful for me. But sometimes it's most useful for me to avoid DNS.

sedatk• 2 years ago

How do you synchronize hosts file between clients?

rzzzt4• 2 years ago

You can set up a server listening to port 53 that will return the corresponding entry from a "hosts file" if you query it for an A record. To avoid the file growing uncomfortably big, it can be split up amongst hierarchically arranged servers.

1vuio0pswjnm76• 2 years ago

While I have no need to lookup an address in local computer A's HOSTS file from local computer B as this is not how I use the HOSTS file, in the event that I did want computer B to look up addresses in computer A's HOSTS file, it seems there are many possible options. I could not even come close to listing all of them. (The discussion here is computers on a local network. Is there a need for a "distributed hierarchical system".)

pdns_recursor can serve /etc/hosts

https://docs.powerdns.com/recursor/settings.html

unbound can serve "local data"

https://unbound.docs.nlnetlabs.nl/en/latest/manpages/unbound...

dnsd from busybox can serve a HOSTS file

   (exec 2>/dev/null;while read a b c ;do echo "$b $a";done < /etc/hosts|busybox dnsd -c /dev/stdin -p1153 -i 10.21.66.4)

tinydns would work too

   echo . > data
   while read a b c;do echo =$b:$a:1;done < /etc/hosts >> data
   tinydns-data
   ROOT=. IP=10.21.66.4 GID=0 UID=0 tinydns

Or just transfer the file instead;

rsync/mrsync could be used to keep computer A and computer B's HOSTS files the same

Or ssh to transfer the HOSTS file from A to B.

   echo cat /etc/hosts |ssh -T computerB "cat > /etc/hosts"

Or use ssh to query computer A's HOSTS file from computer B

   echo getent hosts name|ssh -T computerB

Or some small httpd, e.g., darkhttpd

   httpd /etc --port 1153 --addr 10.21.66.4
   tnftp -4o'|grep name' http://10.21.66.4:1153/hosts

It goes on and on.

But I'm not interested in using the HOSTS file in this way on the local network. I'm more interested in IP addresses than "domain names". I am not a fan of web browsers; I make HTTP requests from the shell command prompt and from shell scripts. For example, I like to create shortcuts for certain IP addresses so I do not have to type them, e.g., when using netcat. For me, the HOSTS file works perfectly for that purpose. I use this functionality every day.

Not every computer on my local network has the same ability to lookup names and IP addresses. Most have zero access to DNS data. No lookups. Some may only be able to lookup a few remote addresses. I might put those in the computer's HOSTS file.

1vuio0pswjnm76• 2 years ago

There is a fear or hatred of /etc/hosts amongst web developers. A regurgitated origin story about DNS and a perpetuated myth about the HOSTS file, having to do with constantly dynamic IP addresses. But the truth is that the conditions of the internet have changed. As someone who uses static, stored DNS data, and as such possesses a large chunk of historical DNS data, I have proof that, for the websites I may visit, most IP addresses do not change frequently.

Domain names are overrated. Web marketing hype. For example, no one uses a domain name to log into their router. But no one at home is getting internet access without typing an IP address at least once to set up a router. If I want to type a short, memorable name instead of an IP number to reach a computer on the local network I can make an entry in /etc/hosts. Using computers that have no /etc/hosts and no control over DNS sucks. Let web developers use those computers.

How many times have I seen developers copy entire portions of RFC 1035 into their code as a "comment". Too many to count. They will always struggle to understand it.

hyperman1• 2 years ago

I'd revently ran into this, after using .local for a long time, and installing something with mdns. Nslookup gave the correct ip, but ping got confused.

A quick google did not deliver a decent reserved domain, but multiple people suggested .home

dkpk• 2 years ago

Stumbled across this thread from 2020 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24606723

tracker1• 2 years ago

I think imternal, .lan, .inside should all be reserved and established to never allow registration with OCANN.

greatgib• 2 years ago

So sad that a big tech company stole the dot dev thanks to the ICANN greediness...

nbadg• 2 years ago

It would be nice to see this paired with more widespread support for the Name Constraints TLS extension, which would in theory allow internal CAs to be restricted to issuing certificates for .internal domains. That would open up a lot of very interesting applications in terms of streamlining HTTPS on local networks, for example, ACME on openWRT routers.

8organicbits6• 2 years ago

Absolutely. We're getting closer, but it's hard to measure what actually supports it as bettertls (the caniuse equivalent in this space) doesn't track it.

https://github.com/Netflix/bettertls/issues/19

teleclimber• 2 years ago

Note there was a W3C community group that explored the "HTTPS on local networks" question. It's closed now but they wrote use cases and proposals:

https://www.w3.org/community/httpslocal/ https://httpslocal.github.io/proposals/ https://httpslocal.github.io/usecases/

I wish some of this work would continue as well.

tensility• 2 years ago

After reading through the threads, I still think that '.lan' is a better non-reserved suffix to use for this than '.internal'; however, my opinion rarely has significant weight in the grand scheme of things.

dubcanada2• 2 years ago

Do you have a reason why you think '.lan' is better then '.internal' besides being shorter? I am curious why.

surfingdino• 2 years ago

lan = LAN or Local Area Network

m463• 2 years ago

It is already in use many places.

Isn't it the default domain name for OpenWRT? Just like the default ip addresses are 192.168.*

TkTech• 2 years ago

And when you're using it to connect to devices not physically on your LAN, like servers reached via tailscale? `.internal` implies your internal network, however it may be setup, `.lan` implies your "local" area network.

gmuslera• 2 years ago

What about ssl? will that work with i.e. letsencrypt?

dubcanada2• 2 years ago

I suspect you'd need to generate your own, unless they intend on allowing people to register them. It's hard to provide a SSL for the 100,000 different "tv.internal".

crote2• 2 years ago

It shouldn't. There is no way to prove ownership of a domain, because everyone owns it. Both a genuine company and their attacker have the right to use the .internal TLD, so both should be granted a certificate. This makes it completely trivial for the attacker to MitM the company's TLS connections.

The only option to somewhat-securely run TLS would be to have the company run their own internal CA, and trust its root certificate on all internal clients.

8organicbits6• 2 years ago

The server authentication story is fairly weak. Multiple companies may use the same .internal domain name and none of them can get a TLS certificate from a public certificate authority. This means they'll each need to operate a private CA if they want to authenticate connections to the server (and encrypt with HTTPS). A major problem with this approach is that computers (especially laptops) travel between networks and can end up trusting more than one private CA. This means that you can have multiple servers using the same domain name, but operated by different orgs, and each appears valid to the end user. Session cookies and other data can leak when this happens.

I think the right solution is that we should require domain registration (google.internal, microsoft.internal, etc.) to avoid these conflicts. A public CA may be able to verify ownership, avoiding the need for private CAs.

I built a service [1] that does this and is compatible with Let's Encrypt. The trick is that I only allow users to set ACME-DNS01 TXT records, not A/AAAA/CNAME records. So you'll still need to run internal DNS for those.

[1] https://www.getlocalcert.net/

crote2• 2 years ago

What's the benefit over just buying a regular domain for my internal stuff? The result would be about the same, and I wouldn't be dependent on you never going out of business.

8organicbits6• 2 years ago

Even with a TLD, going out of business is a concern. Take Freenom as an example, they had rampant abuse and ran into funding issues. People who previously used that service for free internal domains have been looking for a new home.

What's different is that the public suffixes I operate cannot publicly host content, which should protect the service from the abuse concerns that plagued Freenom and other free public suffixes. That reduces cost and should keep the site running.

I recommend buying your own domain if you don't mind the cost. A free solution for domains with TLS on internal networks is valuable to many.

icedchai• 2 years ago

I use a subdomain of “int” for all internal hosts: host.int.example.com. My internal machines have int.example.com and example.com in the search path.

throwawaaarrgh• 2 years ago

If it doesn't get accepted I'll use .arpanet because nobody's registering that

VoodooJuJu• 2 years ago

Why did this take so long?

traceroute662• 2 years ago

.corp, .home and .mail should also be perfectly viable for private use after ICANN eventualy decided to cease all processing of applications for those TLDs.

    "Whereas, on 30 July 2014, the ICANN Board New gTLD Program Committee adopted the Name Collision Management Framework. In the Framework, .CORP, .HOME, and .MAIL were noted as high-risk strings whose delegation should be deferred indefinitely".[1]

[1] https://www.icann.org/en/board-activities-and-meetings/mater...

lolinder• 2 years ago

Deferred indefinitely is not quite the same thing as reserved for private use. For home use cases it's probably good enough, but a corporation will want more assurance than "the current ICANN has stopped processing applications for this TLD."

przemub• 2 years ago

Yeah, with Google getting .dev we can't count on ICANN being reasonable.

fl0ki2• 2 years ago

This is exactly how a committee would design it if none of the participants had actually used an internal domain.

For example, in Google, https://go/foo had "go" as technically a TLD, and the memorable suffix that followed was already part of the path and not the domain name. It made it easy to type or include anywhere, including chats, posters, presentation slides, etc.

If they were to follow this proposal instead, you'd be typing or including https://go.internal/foo , which while more explicit largely defeats the point of the short URL.

dogleash• 2 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_domain

nullindividual2• 2 years ago

Are you sure go wasn't just the hostname?

This was very common in Windows shops back in the NT and even post-NT4 days to leverage the hostname as the URL (http://exchange, http://sharepoint, and so on).

jmgao• 2 years ago

I'm pretty sure it was go.corp.google.com, with corp.google.com configured as one of the search domains.

fl0ki2• 2 years ago

I think it was both, because I think it also worked even when it wasn't a search domain. Can anyone still at Google check?

eqvinox8• 2 years ago

"foo.int/ernal" lookalike attacks in 3… 2… 1…

(to be fair, you generally can't get an .int domain registered. "int is considered to have the strictest application policies of all TLDs, as it implies that the holder is a subject of international law.")

… now that I think about it, "foo.in/ternal" makes so much more sense …

GTP• 2 years ago

But you could do that with any domain, what's special in this case?

eqvinox8• 2 years ago

what's special in this case

There's an existing TLD that is a string prefix of the new TLD.

Apart from lookalike attacks I'm also wondering if this will do weird things while you type in an address, e.g. if you try to type "foo.internal" and pause for a second after "foo.int"… your application may run off and do lookups or even prefetches.

lodovic3• 2 years ago

Please allow self-signed certificates for ".internal" by default

yencabulator4• 2 years ago

If all self-signed certs are allowed by default, then the crypto means nothing at all -- that's not good.

rzzzt4• 2 years ago

Crypto is/could be still fine, it will still make it harder for others to see the contents of the conversation that is going on between the two machines.

What you are losing is the modicum of confidence that a website is the real deal because another party (that browser and OS manufacturers trust) took the time to, at the very least, verify ownership of the domain.

lodovic3• 2 years ago

So rather no crypto at all?

denkmoon2• 2 years ago

No, doing this properly isn’t hard.

caymanjim• 2 years ago

Didn't .local start out this way until it was co-opted by Apple for some network abomination? Any new private domain is just going to get co-opted by something else soon enough. Browser authors and network service authors are going to start using it for random, incompatible purposes and break everything.

If you need DNS, register and use a real domain name. Everything else is going to be a hack. Anyone tech-savvy enough to know what an internal, unroutable TLD is, and have a use for one, is going to be just as comfortable and capable of managing a real domain.

I support the idea of something like .internal, but I'm certain it will be made useless for its intended purpose in short order.

josho2• 2 years ago

I can see one benefit to this approach.

Messing up your .internal configuration won’t result in leaking queries to the public.

And maybe secondarily this may encourage tool development for supporting internal names and make it easier for setting up informal or per department configurations.

snakeyjake• 2 years ago

Zeroconf is only considered an abomination by folks who view any naming system other than DNS to be an abomination.

Domain names are not slaved to DNS, they predate DNS by over a decade, and there is room for more than one naming system.

If DNS has to surrender one of their precious, precious, TLDs (lord knows there are soooo few to choose from) which, again, existed BEFORE DNS was even a twinkle in Paul Mockapetris' eye, so be it.

Arch-TK• 2 years ago

I just use i.slow.network as my internal domain. Most things support search domains to avoid having to type too much.

whycome• 2 years ago

I can't find it now, but wasn't there a story about microsoft using a 'dummy' url in some internal documents that later became real?

miles2• 2 years ago

Yes:

Microsoft Buys Corp.com So Bad Guys Can’t https://krebsonsecurity.com/2020/04/microsoft-buys-corp-com-...

kaliszad• 2 years ago

If you have a customer and DNS seems to work strangely, have a look if you don't have a so called single-label domain for Active Directory, such as host1.internal or crusty.internal if you have more creative admins or even worse, db.local. On Windows, the name resolution on single-label domains behaves a bit differently, using NetBIOS resolution which can prevent you from e.g. adding a new host to the domain from a different subnet - you might see this as DNS failure. Of course, it is not DNS's fault, if it wasn't asked in the first place.

Here are some more details: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/300684/deployment-a... and https://admx.help/?Category=Windows_10_2016&Policy=Microsoft... which does the DNS resolution even for these less than ideal domains.

dingi• 2 years ago

That's too long. I just bastardize an existing tld on local network like home.net. Some browsers don't even allow made up names. Internal is too long to type.

m3drano• 2 years ago

it seems to cover the whole RFC 1918 (IPv4) and 4193 (IPv6), so not only 192.168.0.0/16 like some media indicated.

DavideNL• 2 years ago

So as others have mentioned there already is the ".home.arpa" TLD;

Would the only difference then be the name ".internal" or is there another difference/advantage versus ".home.arpa"?

Proposed top-level domain string for private use: ".internal"

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