up vote 13 down vote favorite
2

Is there any convention on possible naming for local domain names (like .local), apart from not using any possible or existing top-level domain?

Wikipedia says that

  • .local conflicts with zeroconf
  • .localhost is reserved, but is traditionally translated statically to 127.0.0.1
  • .site and .internal are discussed
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up vote 7 down vote accepted

dan bernstein (of qmail fame) has a site dedicated to choosing a dnsname for the local network (http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/dot-local.html):

It isn't easy to choose a safe top-level local name. The global root
operators add new top-level names every once in a while: for example,
.info was added in 2001, so people using .info as a local name were
unable to reach global .info sites. Software authors sometimes set 
aside top-level names; for example, I'm told that Mac OS 9 does something
weird with .local, so it can't access local names in .local. Here are 
some reasonable choices of top-level local names:

 .0       (good for machine-specific names)
 .1
 .2
 .3       (good for department-specific names)
 .4
 .5
 .6       (good for corporation-specific names)
 .7
 .8
 .9
 .internal
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Well ... Dan Bernstein is an authority. Think I'll be going with .internal or .3 then. – nidi Mar 7 '10 at 11:31
3  
Bad advice, like many things coming from Bernstein (who said a lot of stupid things about the DNS). – bortzmeyer Mar 8 '10 at 16:51
3  
@bortzmeyer: you couldnt be more unspecific .. right? – akira Mar 8 '10 at 19:36
1  
@MarkJohnson: all nil. djb is completely irrelevant here. if you have an argument against this proposed answer: bring it on, otherwise dont use the comments here against / in favor of djb. if you have a different advice / answer to the question: bring it on. – akira Nov 12 '11 at 7:45
    
@MarkJohnson: i think OP is absolutely in control of the local network. – akira Dec 3 '11 at 5:18
up vote 19 down vote

The question has been treated in detail on ServerFault. Executive summary; do not use .local or another dummy TLD, use a real domain.

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up vote 3 down vote

Nope.

There is no official naming convention for private domains, because they're private.

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But the chosen naming might conflict at some point (with new TLDs or network services), so a convention would be useful and should be discussed! – nidi Mar 7 '10 at 11:16
up vote -1 down vote

It looks like .home and .corp won't be delegated anytime soon!

The proposed gTLDs .home and .corp create risks to the internet comparable to the Millennium Bug, which terrorized a burgeoning internet at the turn of the century, and should be rejected.

Meanwhile, every other gTLD that has been applied for in the current round could be delayed by months in order to mitigate the risks they pose to internet users.

New gTLDs are the new Y2K: .corp and .home are doomed and everything else is delayed and .home

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In the future please submit proper answers. Link-only answers are not helpful. I improved your answer so it's acceptable. In the future I will just vote to delete answers like the original revision. Signatures are just added noise, they are not allowed, in Superuser answers. – Ramhound Oct 20 '16 at 20:55
up vote -3 down vote

i always use .local

try to refrain from using .com if its a domain that exists on the web you may have issues if its a Windows AD domain, and with certificates (SSL)

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up vote -5 down vote

Make as many as you want.

.dev .new .bak .fun

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5  
Very bad advice since 1) They could be created by ICANN later and 2) your organization may merge with another one which already uses it – bortzmeyer Mar 8 '10 at 16:48

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