Dotless Domain Names Prohibited, ICANN Tells Google 132
New submitter gwstuff writes "Last year, Google filed applications for about 100 top level domains. These included .app, .cloud and .lol, but perhaps most prominently .search, which they had requested to operate as a 'dotless' domain. [Friday], ICANN gave their verdict on the idea that would make this URL valid : NO. Here is the formal announcement, and a related Slashdot story from last year. So that's that. But it may still be granted the rights for the remaining 100. Is prime dot-com real estate going to become a thing of the past?"
.com is still king (Score:3, Insightful)
doesn't matter what other TLDs are announced. .com is still king for consumers, anything else is a just a toy for the nerdy.
Re:.com is still king (Score:5, Insightful)
doesn't matter what other TLDs are announced. .com is still king for consumers, anything else is a just a toy for the nerdy.
Your statement is correct but a bit too understated. I would add the following
.com or .other are hard won when trying to get them to change their defaults. If you tell someone to go to a website they either search, or type in the name and add .com (and an immense number of searchers type the .com part of the domain into the search box too).
.ME and .CO were probably two of the biggest recent TLD launches. You can still pick up a premium in either of these extensions for micro-pennies on the .com dollar, registrations are still less than .1 % of total .com, and the US by far outregisters more domains in all extensions than all other countries combined.
.com will be king, for 20 years at least. Yes you can launch "help.apple" or "game.app" and get some traction, but anything less than the uber-premium word is going to have much less draw for an exceptionally long time. If nothing else but due to the way US consumers are trained en masse. You need to start a whole new brainwashing program to rewire people and I don't see anyone coughing up a few billion for that ad campaign anytime soon.
It is very hard to get people to switch. Even the new internet generation that has no particular preference for
Everyone knows you could have another extension but it's not their first choice.
Lastly, consider that ICANN is definitely the most inept entity in existence. As long as they keep the US Govt happy, they will always continue to run the rest of their org as a stupendous dung heap. This whole game of rolling out new TLDs will take them at least 5 years, and that's not counting all the supreme screwups that are sure to make the process less and less tasteful for those inside and outside the market.
Given these factors, I would say that
Re: (Score:3)
I can't remember the last time I entered a URL manually. What is this, 1994?
I often type in a single letter and the browser autocompletes it for me.
If I don't know the exact URL, I type something in anyway and Google will look it up for me, at which point it will be saved in my browser history.
Re:.com is still king (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't remember the last time I entered a URL manually. What is this, 1994?
Err, how about the first time you visit your bank's Online Banking subsite?
You know the way they tell you in the introductory letter to enter the URL manually and as written in the letter? There is a reason for that.
Just a shame they don't print the signature of their SSL cert in the letter, too.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
How do you get to the banks homepage in the first place (the very first time)? well, you type the address into the urlbar... or i guess you could do a search for it and hope you dont end up on a phising site.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I did exactly this.
I am very happy with my new customer support from Lagos Nigeria they are very friendly, specially Dr. Mobutu Sese Jr. (son of the latter President Mobotu Sese Seko)
There seems to be a little problem with my salary but they promised me to transfer 10.000.000USD as soon as the funds get unfrozen at their secret Swiss bank account.
Re: .com is still king (Score:5, Funny)
My bank is always sending me emails with attached statements and incredible offers. I just click on the links I. The emails.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, no. That's your local cache, "netba" brings up nothing in my web browser since I don't bank at the CBA...
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
One of the most lamentable trends in web browsers nowadays, I think, is making it so that there is only one place to enter a query. When I enter a URL, I want it to be a URL; I do not want it to take a round trip to a search engine.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I can't remember the last time I entered a URL manually. What is this, 1994? I often type in a single letter and the browser autocompletes it for me. If I don't know the exact URL, I type something in anyway and Google will look it up for me, at which point it will be saved in my browser history.
I guess you don't log in to your router or your WAPs to change the parameters, huh? Oh yeah, you probably set your wifi security using the button on the WAP. In fact, you're probably the guy with WEP and the default router password from which I'm leeching bandwith right now!
Re: (Score:2)
Eh, never having a need to enter a URL manually is not really a badge of pride on a technical website. Maybe it is an indication of the type of people reading Slashdot these days, though!
What? Computers are made to automate things. That's their point, they can do repetitive things really fast and usually better than we meatbags can. Taking pride in "doing it the hard way" is just pure idiocy if the result is the same. Sometimes that's not the case, the hard way is actually better, but we're talking about URL autocomplete here. There's no fine art to domain names.
I wouldn't call it a "badge of pride" unless you were one of the people implementing the feature in the browser, but to act
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Too much automation can be a bad thing - it makes certain things less secure. I agree that it is not a badge of pride. but blindly trusting websearches to get you to the right place is certainly not not a badge of pride either. And there certainly is a "fine art to domain names" - typosquatting/phishing sites abuse it just to name a few. so for the first visit to anything that takes information from you, you should certainly manually type it (and then, sure, bookmark it) and that is not even considering any
Re: (Score:3)
Eh, never having a need to enter a URL manually is not really a badge of pride on a technical website. Maybe it is an indication of the type of people reading Slashdot these days, though!
Slashdot, the site that tells us Ctrl-alt-t is a miraculous newsworthy item
And editors that think Ctrl-z is undo, not suspend.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
They will add www to it no matter what I tell them to enter.
They add "www" not because they are technical enough to know what it means when they see it. After all, they cannot tell you what the http and the colon and the rest are for. The US mainstream knows about the doble-u's because exactly 100% of web-savvy ads in the nineties spelled it out. Just like reading a phone # aloud, no?
It was stuff like "h.t.t.p colon slash slash w.w.w. mcdonalds dot com"
It boggles the mind that I lived through that compared to the structure-less "follow us on facebook and twitter
Re: (Score:2)
I hope you meant that as hyperbole. Objectively things have gone rather well for the Internet since 1998.
Though I guess one could claim ICANN's ineffectiveness as the reason? But I would still call that effective due to results.
Re: (Score:1)
"Lastly, consider that ICANN is definitely the most inept entity in existence."
Perhaps, but the mover and shaker behind the policy (their last chair) is now working for a registrar and has a long history of shady dealings
This isn't ineptitude. It's a cynical ploy to milk the system for all it's worth, as most large companies feel obligated to register their brandname in EVERY top level in order to defend their trademarks - ICANN doesn't benefit much but the registrars sure as hell do.
Re:.com is still king (Score:5, Interesting)
...Given these factors, I would say that .com will be king, for 20 years at least.
Trying to make predictions on human behavior on the internet is pointless and for fools. 20 years ago the masses all thought AOL keywords was the only way to search. We've come a LONG way since then, along with a few game-changers along the way (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, smartphones) that change how people act and interact completely with the internet.
All it would take is another game changer to nullify your statement completely to modify behavior like this. We already don't type FQDNs in favor of being lazy and typing a single word into the search bar that is (now) built into every browser instead of having to actually go to your favorite engine search page and type it in. Yet another example of how behavior has modified itself rather quickly. How long before voice commands take over completely? You really think it's going to be 20 years before I'm just speaking a single word into a smartphone to find something? Oh wait, I forgot, we also do that today.
You make bright, salient points, which in contrary to your statements, indirectly validate the concept of .com strength.
.COM to make their stand), tend to stake the same horse, you will have it this way for a long time.
.bit or .onion or even something far more interesting if it ever gets created.
When AOL was launched, it was "going to create a whole new internet". They had their own browser, interface, portals, etc.
Smartphones were going to replace all of that silly typing, Siri was the next generation's voice.
Facebook and Twitter did away with the need for any other way of communication, your profile was the place to be and eradicated the internet as a whole.
Every one of these were internet-killers. World changing, revolutionary, mind-numbing behavior modifiers. In the end they are all nothing next to the concept of free internet browsing, with your own browser, your own limitless mind and your exceptionally mindless searching which brings up whatever result has the most cash behind it. And since big companies (all of the examples above used
I am going to make one possible exception however. Govt spying on all fronts has the world incredibly nervous and with good reason. This could be the game changer behavior that drives people to use extensions that simply aren't traceable to a DNS query in the traditional way, or are simply part of a peer network like
Re: (Score:1)
...Given these factors, I would say that .com will be king, for 20 years at least.
Trying to make predictions on human behavior on the internet is pointless and for fools. 20 years ago the masses all thought AOL keywords was the only way to search. We've come a LONG way since then, along with a few game-changers along the way (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, smartphones) that change how people act and interact completely with the internet.
All it would take is another game changer to nullify your statement completely to modify behavior like this. We already don't type FQDNs in favor of being lazy and typing a single word into the search bar that is (now) built into every browser instead of having to actually go to your favorite engine search page and type it in. Yet another example of how behavior has modified itself rather quickly. How long before voice commands take over completely? You really think it's going to be 20 years before I'm just speaking a single word into a smartphone to find something? Oh wait, I forgot, we also do that today.
You make bright, salient points, which in contrary to your statements, indirectly validate the concept of .com strength.
When AOL was launched, it was "going to create a whole new internet". They had their own browser, interface, portals, etc.
Smartphones were going to replace all of that silly typing, Siri was the next generation's voice.
Facebook and Twitter did away with the need for any other way of communication, your profile was the place to be and eradicated the internet as a whole.
Every one of these were internet-killers. World changing, revolutionary, mind-numbing behavior modifiers. In the end they are all nothing next to the concept of free internet browsing, with your own browser, your own limitless mind and your exceptionally mindless searching which brings up whatever result has the most cash behind it. And since big companies (all of the examples above used .COM to make their stand), tend to stake the same horse, you will have it this way for a long time.
I am going to make one possible exception however. Govt spying on all fronts has the world incredibly nervous and with good reason. This could be the game changer behavior that drives people to use extensions that simply aren't traceable to a DNS query in the traditional way, or are simply part of a peer network like .bit or .onion or even something far more interesting if it ever gets created.
You make some strong points here, but big companies do not use .COM to "make their stand". That is an old mentality that can die because of the technology and behavior I've pointed out. If your favorite new company was a .ORG or .US, you probably wouldn't even notice it, because you and hundreds of millions of other people simply do not use FQDN anymore when looking for information. Hell, the concept of bookmarks almost killed that in itself by eliminating the need to retype your favorite URLs. How many
Re: (Score:2)
...Given these factors, I would say that .com will be king, for 20 years at least.
Trying to make predictions on human behavior on the internet is pointless and for fools. 20 years ago the masses all thought AOL keywords was the only way to search. We've come a LONG way since then, along with a few game-changers along the way (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, smartphones) that change how people act and interact completely with the internet.
All it would take is another game changer to nullify your statement completely to modify behavior like this. We already don't type FQDNs in favor of being lazy and typing a single word into the search bar that is (now) built into every browser instead of having to actually go to your favorite engine search page and type it in. Yet another example of how behavior has modified itself rather quickly. How long before voice commands take over completely? You really think it's going to be 20 years before I'm just speaking a single word into a smartphone to find something? Oh wait, I forgot, we also do that today.
You make bright, salient points, which in contrary to your statements, indirectly validate the concept of .com strength.
When AOL was launched, it was "going to create a whole new internet". They had their own browser, interface, portals, etc.
Smartphones were going to replace all of that silly typing, Siri was the next generation's voice.
Facebook and Twitter did away with the need for any other way of communication, your profile was the place to be and eradicated the internet as a whole.
Every one of these were internet-killers. World changing, revolutionary, mind-numbing behavior modifiers. In the end they are all nothing next to the concept of free internet browsing, with your own browser, your own limitless mind and your exceptionally mindless searching which brings up whatever result has the most cash behind it. And since big companies (all of the examples above used .COM to make their stand), tend to stake the same horse, you will have it this way for a long time.
I am going to make one possible exception however. Govt spying on all fronts has the world incredibly nervous and with good reason. This could be the game changer behavior that drives people to use extensions that simply aren't traceable to a DNS query in the traditional way, or are simply part of a peer network like .bit or .onion or even something far more interesting if it ever gets created.
You make some strong points here, but big companies do not use .COM to "make their stand". That is an old mentality that can die because of the technology and behavior I've pointed out. If your favorite new company was a .ORG or .US, you probably wouldn't even notice it, because you and hundreds of millions of other people simply do not use FQDN anymore when looking for information. Hell, the concept of bookmarks almost killed that in itself by eliminating the need to retype your favorite URLs. How many bookmarks do you have right now that are not .COM? Did you even realize it? I didn't think so.
And to be clear, NONE of your examples were ever meant to be internet "killers". The smartphone was never meant to replace the keyboard as a whole, and hasn't even done it itself. Facebook or Twitter was never meant to replace ALL forms of communication in your life, as neither can even handle voice after years of use. They are internet enhancers that can (and did) modify behavior, and it sure as hell didn't take 20 years to do it.
ALL of this horseshit in the namespace is nothing more than unadulterated greed by Registrars and ICANN. That's it. Find the cheapest TLD you can run with, come up with a catchy yet nonsensical word (you know, like "twitter" or "instagram"), and invest in SEO if you want to be found. It's really that simple. Plenty of successful companies thrive outside of the aging mentality that they NEED a .COM to survive. Registrars are trying to keep this "worry" alive and well for the sake of profit.
Registrars don't care which extension you register, and in fact the highest profit for them is of course anything other than a .com or .net. Only one company has that contract and they are in bed with the Govt. Again, nothing will change that behavior, the old stakehorse remains .com simply because you haven't launched Despicable.Me the next movie portal or Angel.co the next VC sourcepoint. Having something in use does not constitute wide acceptance. These are all moot points. You can do whatever you want a
Re: (Score:3)
For example, how many American companies apply for .us domain? The other side of the coin is that you are only talking about the English speaking world. In Poland people want a .pl domain because customers know that the site will be in Polish. This is also true with most other languages. Obviously these are not nerdy but still niche. As for .search stupid now we have the omnibrowser or whatever you call it where I just enter the search string instead of a URL.
Re:.com is still king (Score:5, Informative)
For example, how many American companies apply for .us domain? The other side of the coin is that you are only talking about the English speaking world.
Heck he is probablly only talking about the USA
Over here in the uk .co.uk is pretty commonly used. Sometimes .com will take you to the right place too but other tines it will take you to a foreign company of the same name or for multinational companies to the american website of the company in question.
Re: (Score:2)
Will other cute words just be part of the same legal and cryptographic trap?
Re: (Score:2)
The fun part is .com is now understood to be .nsa.
Most URLS's are name.designation.country with many US URLS leaving off the "country" which should be us. So if you just see .com without the country you can be sure it is a "commercial US" URL. Now if you see .mil or .gov without a country code top level domain you could be forgiven for thinking it is a front for the NSA, although I think I would be a bit more worried about .xxx domains without a country designation.
For a list of top level domains the following site [wikipedia.org] may be helpful although when they tal
Re: (Score:1)
That's out the window. There's a lot of commercial US companies that use a .ca, .co.uk., .au etc. They just go to a site that "looks" like it would be in that country. But still ship from the US. And there's also a lot of .com sites that could be from anywhere. So .com is still going to be king for a long, long time.
Re: (Score:2)
.com is a gTLD, it's not US at all. Just like .net, .org, and .xxx. None of these have country designations because they are generic. .edu, .mil and .gov are abominations (should be .edu.us, .mil.us and .gov.us like everyone else has to), but too ingrained to fix now.
Re: (Score:2)
Today.
Who knows how it will be 20 years from now. Especially since the 'rules' are pretty much out the window now of what goes where. ( other than .gov of course )
Re: (Score:2)
doesn't matter what other TLDs are announced. .com is still king for consumers, anything else is a just a money grab.
FTFY
Re: (Score:2)
That's because you lack imagination and keep thinking of TLDs as "Yet Another Dot Com". Just because the ICANN keeps making new alternative ".com" (to make more money?) doesn't mean TLDs have to all be like that.
Google applied for ".here". Not sure what they want it for but more than 10 years ago I proposed that ".here" be a reserved TLD for local use by anyone similar to the way the RFC1918 ip address ranges are used.
http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-yeoh-tldhere-01 [ietf.org]
I also wrote to the ICANN to try to get it
Re: (Score:2)
doesn't matter what other TLDs are announced. .com is still king for consumers, anything else is a just a toy for the nerdy.
So true, if my wife tells me "foo.com" I just put "foo" into a google search because half the time it is really .tv or .th but the average non-techie mostly associates ".com" with "the internet."
Re: (Score:2)
Re: no.maybe.yes? (Score:5, Funny)
I'd like to have "dot". Can you imagine the confusion when people try to communicate what the URL is?
Or could you imagine some madman calling his site "slash" "dot", it would be twice as confusing.
Re: (Score:2)
I want this domain:
DotDashDash-Dash-DotDotDashDot.Dot
(yes, it's basically the Slashdot domain joke on steroids)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Or how about phishing and other fraud that already capitalizes on people being mistaken about what the URL is.
Making URL recognition worse... ah NO.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
What about lesbian porn websites?
Re: (Score:2)
http://apple (Score:3)
Back in 1993, if you typed the URL http://apple/ [apple] into Mosaic anywhere on the University of Vermont network, you would get a page about apple orchards. Of course, this was just UVM's DNS.
Re: (Score:2)
Care to elaborate?
Or are you just talking out of your ass?
Re: (Score:3)
Some country-code domains have their CCTLD set up as a website.
Try http://tk./ [tk.] and http://dk./ [dk.] for example.
Complete list of CCTLDs with A records (many more have MX records):
ac has address 193.223.78.210
ai has address 209.59.119.34
cm has address 195.24.205.60
dk has address 193.163.102.24 (and ipv6 2a01:630:0:40:b1a:b1a:2011:1)
gg has address 87.117.196.80
io has address 193.223.78.212
je has address 87.117.196.80
kh has address 203.223.32.21
pn has address 80.68.93.100
sh has address 193.223.78.211
tk has address
Re: (Score:2)
Some country-code domains have their CCTLD set up as a website.
Try http://tk./ [tk.] and http://dk./ [dk.] for example.
Both give me the "Firefox can't find the server at" message.
Re: (Score:3)
tk seems a bit dodgy, but dk reliably redirects:
$ curl -I http://dk./ [dk.]
HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Date: Sat, 31 Aug 2013 14:49:11 GMT
Server: Apache
Location: https://www.dk-hostmaster.dk/ [dk-hostmaster.dk]
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
How about http://io./ [io.] , that returns 200 (no redirecting) and works fine in Opera, Chromium and Firefox on Linux for me.
$ curl -I http://io./ [io.]
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Sat, 31 Aug 2013 14:50:10 GMT
Server: Apache/2.4.2 (Unix) OpenSSL/0.9.8n
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Type: text/html
Re: (Score:3)
That's a valid URL, for internal to your own DNS server. If no FQDN is provided pointing it to a domain outside your own, it will try to match up that name to any A records or CNAME records that exist on your DNS.
Many organizations do this for internal webpages. http://intranet/ [intranet] , http://learning/ [learning] , http://getservice/ [getservice] are examples of how some companies do this. It's not the same as the Google suggestion, which is making a top level FQDN domain.
answer... (Score:2)
branding!! (Score:3)
competition! consumerism! capitalism! money! profit!
Humanity: having the ability but lacking the decency to just cooperate since, well, forever.
Re: (Score:2)
Aside from a couple of entitled *assholes, everyone co-operates and acts like there's 4 way stop sign.
I don't think the fear of wrecking your car, and sustaining possible major bodily damage, can strictly be called cooperation. A spontaneous Nash Equilibrium, sure.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Ever been at a 4 way intersection when the stop lights are out? ..., everyone co-operates and acts like there's 4 way stop sign.
Of course they do. Legally, there is no difference. The intersection doesn't become a free-for-all just because the lights are out. If the lights are present but not working, it's considered an all-way stop, and proceeding through without stopping is no different than running a stop sign or stop light.
While this does demonstrate a degree of cooperation, it's no different than the cooperation you see at a working stop light, an intersection with stop signs, or really just about any other situation involving
When I look around me... (Score:3)
http://damnit (Score:2)
Peh stupid (Score:2)
I know the /. crowd may or may not disagree, but it would simplify the domain system. Why can't we have a washington.dc.city or toronto.on.ca.city among others, or linux.os, or hell how about ford.car, or photoshop.app. Or Washingtonpost.news, or CBS.news. To me it makes sense as an extension of the domain system to a level that people will understand.
Bah...give it another 10 years when the net is at saturation point and we'll probably have this breakdown happen.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
The domain name system is a hierarchical system of administrative authority. When you choose a domain name, you're really choosing the authority who will delegate your chosen domain name to you. To a marketer or a librarian, there may be different priorities for choosing a domain name, but the administrative authority is the only hierarchical system inherent to the domain name system. As domain names move up the ladder, from second level domains to top level domains, the hierarchy becomes flatter, but it re
Re: (Score:2)
city.washington.dc.us -- city.toronto.or.ca don't we already have * ENOUGH * of those names ?
Re: (Score:2)
It makes no sense to the actual users. Its hard enough now to know what is real and what isn't and how to get there. Opening things up like that would just breed confusion for users. "where do i go now?"
Re: (Score:2)
That may or may not be the case for generic TLDs as you suggest.
However: who is going to control the TLDs? The summary suggests the applicant, and that's also my impression from previous such news.
Many companies will want to register their company name as TLD. So instead of google.com we now have to go to search.google or www.google. That doesn't simplify stuff. So to really simplify it, Google tried to register .search and then have it allowed to run "dotless", so just http://search./ [search.] And with so many comp
Re: (Score:2)
First, this ruling isn't against that. This ruling only rejects dotless TLDs - things like just 'city' on it's own.
Secondly, there are always contention issues. For example, 'London.city.' I'm near London. But there's also a London, Ontario. And several Londons in the US. We've already had a dispute about the 'Amazon' TLD, because Amazon the company wants the rights but Brazil also want it as a TLD associated with the river and its basin. You gave 'app' as an example - but 'app store' is a trademark of Appl
The hierarchy works. mostly. (Score:2)
Toronto.ON.CA should work today, the CA TLD is to blame. .city would be stupid which is why ICANN shouldn't be idiotically opening up TLDs to anybody with the cash.
Operating a registry should have been the only admissible use of the new TLDs. ICANN is screwing everything up now; time for the U.N. to take over. If I had the cash, I'd buy .USA and then proceed to spoof the .us domains... and .MS or .Microsoft or .Microsott ....
Re: (Score:2)
CA TLD is an example TLD. It is in charge of .ca, it decides who and how it's subdomains are managed. It can sell them off like an anarchist or it can manage them all with an iron fist. That includes dictating how the lower domains like .bc or .qc are to be run (if not running them itself.) Each nation can do it's own thing. .US and the non-country TLDs are the same thing-- they are the responsibility and fault of the US Dept of Commerce.
The U.N. should take over and the USA deserves the right to not ne
Re: (Score:2)
Just because Google applied for .app doesn't mean they'll get it. I'm pretty sure Apple and a ton of other companies also applied for it.
Whats the point (Score:4, Insightful)
Most of the new devices connecting to the internet these days don't have a keyboard, who's gonna type in a URL anyway.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes we should just replace every website on the internet with a crappy buggy app that does nothing other than wrap some html 5 interface with part of the website content.
Re: (Score:2)
You've talked to my company's IT department, haven't you!
How about just using the dot? (Score:3, Insightful)
Dotless names are used for local hosts (and frequently other shortcuts, like ssh aliases). Many systems use the dot to decide whether to do a global DNS lookup; if there aren't enough dots in there, the local domain gets appended. It's a lot like pathnames with the slash separator, where slash in front makes it an absolute path. What most people don't realise is that there are absolute DNS names too, which end with a period. If someone were to register the "search" top level domain, the URL would look like "http://search." Including the period. On /. of all places, this ought to be known.
Re:How about just using the dot? (Score:5, Interesting)
DNS is delicate.
There was an issue a couple of years ago - I can't remember the details, but it involved printers ceasing to work suddenly without cause in some businesses. Offices where they just ceased to function.
Turned out that the printers had been running a check for firmware updates on boot - they tried to reach their manufacturer server each time, but only got a NXDOMAIN, as the model was no longer supported an the update server no longer maintained. Until the day one of the major ISPs decided to spoof non-existant domains to instead point to their own advert-laden 'helpful' search page. The printers thus tried to fetch their firmware update from that page and, getting a 400 response, tried to install it - but instead it just failed checksum, causing the printers to lock up in objection.
I can't recall the details any more, but you can probably look them up with enough googling. Easily fixed once you know the problem, but it shows just how delicate name lookup can be.
How many businesses have a server somewhere called 'search?' If a 'search' TLD were registered, queries would become ambiguous and traffic ends up going to the wrong place.
What about the existing dotless sites? (Score:5, Interesting)
E.g. http://uz [uz]
Will they have to disable it?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
They effectively have as they are unreachable by a properly setup network which would respond to that request by appending the local DNS suffix. In an out of the box Linux install you end up trying to connect to uz.localhost which doesn't get you very far.
Re: (Score:2)
Eh that should have said localdomain
Re: (Score:2)
Any name specified with a trailing dot will not have a local domain or search domain appended.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes my point exactly. The trailing dot is absolute. Omission of the trailing dot however results in exactly what this thread is about, that some people can reach http://uz/ [uz] and other's can not.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
This has more to do with the way you set up your network. The default action for a dotless domain should be to append a DNS suffix in relation to the local network. This can either be done by the OS or by an internal DNS server. When I type http://uz/ [uz] I get an error because the server uz.myhomenetwork.com is not a valid domain.
If however I type http://uz./ [uz.] it directs me to the correct Russian site as the dot unambiguously directs the OS to look up the record without a DNS suffix.
This has nothing to do with
Re: (Score:2)
It also doesn't work for me, as my local DNS server correctly rejects it. Using Google's DNS server and the domain root dot, I can see that it actually exists.
hrm. (Score:3, Insightful)
It strikes me as ironic that the company who has marginalized domain names is trying to hoard a bunch of TLDs.
(I mean, do you ever type in 'thingiwant.com,' or do you just toss 'thing I want' in the Google bar?)
Google profits from TLD confusion (Score:4, Interesting)
After all with hundreds of TLDs added, who can remember where anything is at? Guess I'll have to google it.
Local networks (Score:2)
Computers currently use the dot in a domain name to determine whether the machine is on the local network or not.
What if I made my machine name 'search''? Would I get all the traffic intended for the 'search' dotless domain? Would people be unable to resolve via my hostname at all, getting google whenever they tried to get to me?
router (Score:1)
Dotless domain support. (Score:3)
I thought dotless domains were coming, and put full support for dotless domains in SiteTruth.
There was a long discussion of this on the Mozilla developers mailing list. There are some dotless domains right now. A few country codes will resolve to an IP address, and one or two actually have a web site there. Try ac [ac.]
A lot of software, some of it very low level, mishandles dotless domains. If you look up "ac" in DNS, you'll get a valid IP address. Browsers, though, usually try using it as a search keyword, or try it with ".com" suffixed. There was a concern that if every word typed into a browser's input box had to be checked for being a TLD domain name, it would overload the root servers and delay search responses. DNS TLD "no finds" are relatively expensive operations.
Down at the "getaddrinfo()" level, there's a known bug. [sourceware.org] There's an exploit for this that drives traffic to subdomains of "com.com", which is set up so that all subdomains of .com.com" are full of ad pages. Right now this is just annoying, but it could be exploited in more ways if single-component domain names became popular.
That's really hard to fix, because it's in the C library on most machines. Applications would have to be rebuilt.
If you put a "." at the end of a domain name, it's "rooted", and local lookups on your local network do not apply. Type "ac." into your browser's input box, and you'll get some domain registrar who bought the Ascension Island TLD.
ICANN actually did something right.
The death of domain names (Score:1)
Remember the early days of ebay? How you could peruse ALL of the new postings for a day in "computer hardware" (one single category) in ten minutes? Yes, you would go to computer>hardware to get to the category, and that's what you did.
Now ebay has been overrun by online stores and bulk postings, a single ID posting hundreds or more items per day. A virtual online catalog for thousands of sale-by-the-shovel retailers.
Re: (Score:2)
I wonder if that's true.
For websites I don't know I always use search already. That's simply how that works.
For websites I do know I simply starting: s, l, a, s, h until my browser fetched slashdot.org from my browser history at which point I hit Enter.
Whether the website ends it .com, .org or .vague doesn't matter for my usage pattern. Am I that special?
Re: (Score:2)