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Comment by d2wa | Hacker News Reader

Read the article. Don’t use .local (except for mDNS.)

Now it's evident I answered reflexively without reading the article. I like the concept of <server>.<location>.local/localdomain so host names never collided when you connected through VPN from one to another. That can still be done with <server>.<location>.home.arpa, but it feels ugly. I guess I'll get used to it.

> Don’t use .local (except for mDNS.)

Going forward, I agree. However for many years, the recommendation from large providers (including Microsoft) WAS to use .local

I've got .local as my internal network. For some people, it's not a trivial job to re-domain everything.

If your L2 DNS (hostnames, typically auto-generated) doesn't match your L3 DNS (handpicked) you're going to eventually have a Bad Time.

Microsoft had .corp as a placeholder for years, intending admins to input their own domains. (Which many promptly never did.) However, I'm not aware of them ever recommending or using .local for anything.

SBS (Small Business Server) pushed .local for YEARS.

They don't give a reason. I don't believe the author. I think it will not only technically work fine, but it's a good idea and better than using what the author suggests.

They do give a reason: mDNS is a standard that was assigned .local. mDNS is useful for a number of reasons. (One of its original codenames was "Bonjour" if that helps connect the dots on how old mDNS is at this point.)

It's not worth the effort to break mDNS because lots of apps can use mDNS, it's a useful standard. In fact, in many LANs today (on modern operating systems inc. relatively recent versions of Windows 10 as Microsoft was one of the last to adopt mDNS) mDNS does almost everything people would want DNS to do in LAN scope anyway and you could get away with not assigning any local DNS and just using mDNS services.

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