ICANN Reserves<nobr> <wbr></nobr>.Internal For Private Use at the DNS Level

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has agreed to reserve the .internal top-level domain so it can become the equivalent to using the 10.0.0.0, 172.16.0.0 and 192.168.0.0 IPv4 address blocks for internal networks. From a report: Those blocks are reserved for private use by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, which requires they never appear on the public internet. As The Register reported when we spotted the proposal last January, ICANN wanted something similar but for DNS, by defining a top-level domain that would never be delegated in the global domain name system (DNS) root. Doing so would mean the TLD could never be accessed on the open internet -- achieving the org's goal of delivering a domain that could be used for internal networks without fear of conflict or confusion. ICANN suggested such a domain could be useful, because some orgs had already started making up and using their own domain names for private internal use only. Networking equipment vendor D-Link, for example, made the web interface for its products available on internal networks at .dlink. ICANN didn't like that because the org thought ad hoc TLD creation could see netizens assume the TLDs had wider use -- creating traffic that busy DNS servers would have to handle. Picking a string dedicated to internal networks was the alternative. After years of consultation about whether it was a good idea -- and which string should be selected -- ICANN last week decided on .internal. Any future applications to register it as a global TLD won't be allowed.

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