We use .lh, short for localhost. For local network services I use service discovery and .local. And for internal stuff we just use a subdomain of our domain.
Sure, you can do whatever you want. You could even use non-rfc1918 addresses and nobody can stop you. It’s just not always a great idea for your own network’s functionality and security. You can use an unregistered TLD if you want, but it’s worth knowing that when people and companies did that in the past, and the TLD was later registered, things didn’t turn out well for them. You wouldn’t expect .foo to be a TLD, right? And it wasn’t, until it was.
Ah good point. I guess a future-proofed guarantee that the domain will never be used externally would be easier to use than trying to somehow configure my DNS to never update specific addresses.
German router and network products company AVM learned the hard way that this is a bad idea. They use fritz.box for their router interface page and it was great until tld .box became publicly available and somebody registered fritz.box.
Having a reserved local/internal only tld is really great to prevent such issues.
I agree that this is a good idea, but I wanted to add that if someone owns a domain already, they can also use that internally without issue.
If you own a domain and use Let’s Encrypt for a star cert, you can have nice, well secured internal applications on your network with trusted certificates.
That is great when using only RFC 1918 IPv4 addresses in the network, but as soon as IPv6 is added to the mix all those internal only network resources can becomes easy publicly available and announced.
Yes, this can be prevented with firewalling but it should be considered.
If you just run a personal private network, then yea pick anything because you can change it fairly easily. Companies should try to stick to things that they know won’t change under them just to avoid issues
Certain domain names are locally routed only. So if you use internal or local as a tld, you can just assign whatever names you want and your computer won’t go looking out on the internet for them. This means you and I can both have fileserver.local as an address on our respective network without conflicting. It’s the URI equivalent of 192.168.0.0/16.
I’ve also used .local but .local could imply a local neighborhood. The word itself is based on “location”. Maybe a campus could be .local but the smaller networks would be .internal
Or, maybe they want to not confuse it with link-local or unique local addresses. Though, maybe all .internal networks should be using local (private) addresses?
I was using .local, but it ran into too many conflicts with an mDNS service I host and vice versa. I switched to .lan, but I’m certainly not going to switch to .internal unless another conflict surfaces.
I’ve also developed a host-monitoring solution that uses mDNS, so I’m not about to break my own software. 😅
It’s also second only to .com in terms of query volume in ICANN’s Magnitude statistics with 980 mil vs .internal’s 60 mil. Not sure if that makes it a de facto standard, but it’s close.
The main problem I have is waking up in the middle of the night worrying that ICANN pulled some more stupid corrupt bullshit that only makes networking worse and breaks my config.
Just look elsewhere in this thread: someone thinks that using .honk as a joke is safe. But what about .horse? .baby? .barefoot? .cool? (I stopped scrolling through the list at this point but you can see how arbitrary and idiotic things have become.)
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It would have been nice if they came up with something shorter like .lan.
Oh, that’s LAN - I thought you’d put ian and I was trying to get the joke. Stupid sans-serif fonts.
First pictures of him sleeping now he has a TLD
Use it anyway.
You go to networking jail for that.
Lowercase .lan uppercase .LAN…
Straight to jail
Shit, let’s hope the ICANN cops don’t find me out then… I’ve been using it for years!
“I hereby sentence you to two years on your own VLAN with no gateway”
“Please Mr. Router, mercy!”
iptables -I APPEALS -j DROP
418
Error 418
Took long enough
I will stick with .lan
Tai’shar Malkier!
But what if your name is not Ian…
Then change it Ian!
Next up!
ICANN approves use of
.awesome-selfhosteddomain for your networkMy network is .milkme and I have nipples… will they approve it?
You can milk anything with nipples!
We use .lh, short for localhost. For local network services I use service discovery and .local. And for internal stuff we just use a subdomain of our domain.
I personally use .nexus for my network.
routerlogin.net how I do not miss you
i loved that it was an option. not sure why it was changed.
Woohoo! We internal now! No more FQDN collisions!
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
6 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 6 acronyms.
[Thread #910 for this sub, first seen 8th Aug 2024, 09:05] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
Missed the opportunity for
.myshit.Interesting. I’ve been using “.home.arpa” for a while now, since that’s one of the other often used ways.
Yes, I’ve been using this too. Here’s the RFC for .home.arpa (in place of .home): https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8375.html
Nice. Thanks 👍
No problem!
Why do I care what ICANN says I can do on my own network? It’s my network, I do what I want.
Try using .com for your internal network and watch the problems arise. Their choice to reserve .internal helps people avoid fqdn collisions.
See also https://traintocode.com/stop-using-test-dot-com/
Well as long as the TLD isn’t used by anyone it should work internally regardless of what ICANN says, especially if I add it to etc/hosts
Sure, you can do whatever you want. You could even use non-rfc1918 addresses and nobody can stop you. It’s just not always a great idea for your own network’s functionality and security. You can use an unregistered TLD if you want, but it’s worth knowing that when people and companies did that in the past, and the TLD was later registered, things didn’t turn out well for them. You wouldn’t expect .foo to be a TLD, right? And it wasn’t, until it was.
Ah good point. I guess a future-proofed guarantee that the domain will never be used externally would be easier to use than trying to somehow configure my DNS to never update specific addresses.
German router and network products company AVM learned the hard way that this is a bad idea. They use fritz.box for their router interface page and it was great until tld .box became publicly available and somebody registered fritz.box.
Having a reserved local/internal only tld is really great to prevent such issues.
I agree that this is a good idea, but I wanted to add that if someone owns a domain already, they can also use that internally without issue.
If you own a domain and use Let’s Encrypt for a star cert, you can have nice, well secured internal applications on your network with trusted certificates.
You don’t even need a star cert… The DNS challenge works for that use case as well.
I agree, if you’re putting your internal domain names into the public DNS you do not need a star cert.
No, you don’t need to do that.
That is great when using only RFC 1918 IPv4 addresses in the network, but as soon as IPv6 is added to the mix all those internal only network resources can becomes easy publicly available and announced. Yes, this can be prevented with firewalling but it should be considered.
If you just run a personal private network, then yea pick anything because you can change it fairly easily. Companies should try to stick to things that they know won’t change under them just to avoid issues
deleted by creator
The value of the DNS is that we all use the same one. You can declare independence, but you’d lose out on that value.
the only losers in this situation are people that are squatting on my rightfully pirated domain names!
Certain domain names are locally routed only. So if you use internal or local as a tld, you can just assign whatever names you want and your computer won’t go looking out on the internet for them. This means you and I can both have fileserver.local as an address on our respective network without conflicting. It’s the URI equivalent of 192.168.0.0/16.
Interesting that you should use “.local” as an example, as that one’s extra special, aka Multicast DNS
YouCANN do anything you want?
Sorry. I chose .local and I’m sticking to it.
I still haven’t heard a convincing argument to not use .local and I see no reason to stop.
I’ve also used .local but .local could imply a local neighborhood. The word itself is based on “location”. Maybe a campus could be .local but the smaller networks would be .internal
Or, maybe they want to not confuse it with link-local or unique local addresses. Though, maybe all .internal networks should be using local (private) addresses?
Tell me you don’t share a net with Macs without using those words.
mDNS hasn’t been a just-Apple thing for decades. Do you still call it Ren-dess-voos like the Gaston character in Beauty and the Beast?
Macs aren’t the only thing that use mDNS, either. I have a host monitoring solution that I wrote that uses it.
Even on windows sometimes depending on the target host, I’ve had to type host.local. (Final dot to do exact match) instead of host.local
This didn’t seem to affect other domains. I’m assuming it was due to special handling of .local
My main issue was it doesn’t play well with Macs.
Mainly conflicts with mDNS. However it’s shitty IMHO that the mDNS spec snarfed a domain already in widespread use, should have used .mDNS or similar.
That I agree with. Microsoft drafted the recommendation to use it for local networks, and Apple ignored it or co-opted it for mDNS.
.local is already used by mDNS/Zeroconf.
You mean mDNS/Zeroconf are using a tld that was already being used.
I was using .local, but it ran into too many conflicts with an mDNS service I host and vice versa. I switched to .lan, but I’m certainly not going to switch to .internal unless another conflict surfaces.
I’ve also developed a host-monitoring solution that uses mDNS, so I’m not about to break my own software. 😅
Yeah, I don’t really have a use at home for mDNS. None that I can think of, anyway. Pretty sure I was using it before MDNS was a thing.
Accessing printers? Resolving hostnames of internal hosts? I can’t imagine having a lan without mDNS
Oh. Internal hosts, I just setup on my own DNS… No need for that. Printer, can’t say I’ve ever had a problem.
.internal takes to long to type
Yeah, that’s why I started using .lan.
I switched from .local to .honk and I’m never looking back.
I love it
Fucking GENIUS.
I don’t get it.
It’s also second only to .com in terms of query volume in ICANN’s Magnitude statistics with 980 mil vs .internal’s 60 mil. Not sure if that makes it a de facto standard, but it’s close.
I’ve had issues with .local on my Android device. Straight up doesn’t work. I had to change to .lan
Hmm, the only issue I had was because it was using the DoH (which I don’t have a local server for). Once I disabled that, it was fine.
I went with .home and so far the problems are within reason
I’m using .home and have not had any issues. Would you mind sharing what problems you’ve come across so I know what to expect?
The main problem I have is waking up in the middle of the night worrying that ICANN pulled some more stupid corrupt bullshit that only makes networking worse and breaks my config.
Just look elsewhere in this thread: someone thinks that using .honk as a joke is safe. But what about .horse? .baby? .barefoot? .cool? (I stopped scrolling through the list at this point but you can see how arbitrary and idiotic things have become.)
Thanks but I hardly needed anyone permission to not use that. .local still works just fine.
Good luck with that. .local is reserved for mDNS calls, and not every OS treats it the same way. Ask me how I know.
Been working fine for me for twenty years or more in a mixed environment.
Except when it doesn’t. It can have issues around multicast dns.
It just means .internal won’t be relayed out on the internet, as it will be reserved for local only.
I’ve had issues with .local on my Android device. Straight up doesn’t work. I had to change to .lan
Same here, just stumbled across this issue yesterday when I tried to restructure my network to use .local
I think it was only added in android 12.
I used to use .local but mDNS can get confused, .home has been fine though