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Comment by mavhc | Hacker News Reader

Are ports 1-4999 already in use? Can we reserve a private area like 192.168/24 for IPs?

Also why is there no official TLD for DNS for local domains?

You can use the .local, .localhost, .example, and .test TLDs for local domains -- these are IANA reserved: https://www.iana.org/assignments/special-use-domain-names/sp...

.local is used for mDNS these days, don't use it if your network has Apple devices.

not just Apple devices, you'll find mDNS resolvers on many setups. Overrides in the hosts file might be fine, but still, I'd avoid it.

> don't use it if your network has Apple devices.

As of now, but something about IPv6 also forced Microsoft to implement this, and some Linux distros also does this in CUPS (I know it's Apple...)

Only .localhost, .example, .test, and .invalid are reserved for those purposes: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2606. .local is reserved, but for mDNS usage.

What about .arpa[0]?

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17093337

.home and .corp are also kind of available. They are reserved so they won't ever be made available but aren't officially recognised as special use domains.

I use .home and it's fine, but there's the occasional oddity when e.g. Chrome doesn't recognise "myserver.home" as a FQDN as ".home" isn't on its built in list of TLDs

'.dev' was bought for the purpose of "never using it" but then Google went and started using it.

So, there's at least _some_ precedent that previously reserved things become unreserved :(

Yeah I don't think that's how it happened

That's literally what happened though; Heres the first result I found that talks about them opening up .dev and it literally says "Intended for internal use at Google Only". Though they don't provide additional citations, it's commonly understood that this was the reason it was acquired.

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-opens-up-dev-doma...

"intended to be private and reserved for Google’s use only"

That's a lot different from "never using it" and it isn't like they publicly made a pledge that was what they were going to do with it...

Ok, but the request: https://gtldresult.icann.org/application-result/applications...

says: “The proposed gTLD will provide Google with direct association to the term “dev,” which is an abbreviation of the word, “development.” The mission of this gTLD, .dev, is to provide a dedicated domain space in which Google can enact second-level domains specific to its projects in development.”

and goes on to say:

> “18(b). How do you expect that your proposed gTLD will benefit registrants, Internet users, and others?

> Given its intended use by Google, the .dev gTLD will best add value to the gTLD space by remaining completely closed for the sole use of Google.”

And finally:

> “18(c). What operating rules will you adopt to eliminate or minimize social costs?

> Members of the public will not be able to register domain names in this new gTLD.”

Those statements don't really say that none of the .dev domains will ever resolve, only that all .dev domains that do resolve will point to Google projects that are "in development" (which either means services that haven't officially launched yet or services that aren't deprecated yet, depending on interpretation).

Are you sure you want to make the argument that because words can be interpreted in their least charitable way that that’s what the intention really was?

Reading that proposal is _clear_ to me that it’s for internal use only and that the impact to the global internet is that “it does not exist”. (And even hinting that it’s a good thing).

Obviously they never _comitted_ to never using it, but it is absolutely apparent that their intent was “internal to google, unused outside” and given how poisoned the .dev namespace was already at that time: it was met with somewhat apprehensive open arms.

Google then went and opened it and made it impossible to use locally by pinning HSTS on the TLD level. Which is basically the worst thing they could have done with it, given that people were using it locally already.. and some popular frameworks even recommended it as an option when running locally.

(Though, there is an argument to be made there that they made sure things worked as expected by forcing the public use of .dev)

Obviously it’s fine now. But don’t pretend this was obvious.

> Though they don't provide additional citations

It's in their gTLD application for .dev[1]

> The mission of this gTLD, .dev, is to provide a dedicated domain space in which Google can enact second-level domains specific to its projects in development. Specifically, the new gTLD will provide Google with greater ability to create a custom portal for employees to manage products and services in development.

> Charleston Road Registry believes that given its intended use by Google, the .dev gTLD will best add value to the gTLD space by remaining completely closed for the sole use of Google.

[1]: https://gtldresult.icann.org/applicationstatus/applicationde...

That's quite different from reserved to be never used. And even if that had been the goal, it's still quite different than TLDs where ICANN has said they won't delegate them. (Which in turn are arguably weaker than ones that are reserved by an actual internet standard, although I suspect .home and .corp are more than poisoned enough. For $reasons the standard says .home.arpa and .corp.arpa, which nobody ever uses)

I don't think IANA explicitly reserved .dev. It was made popular as a local dev domain by Basecamp's Pow[1] and Laravel Valet[2]. IANA only defines .test, .example, .invalid, .local, and .localhost as reserved (with .onion being the latest addition in 2015[3])

Though in this list, only .test and .example are marked as non-special and must be resolved normally by RFC 6761, and .local is reserved for mDNS by RFC 6762. In this list, .test would have been the most appropriate for Pow to use.

CydeWeys (Tech Lead of Google Registry) has commented on HN in the past that they did not anticipated people weren't following the best practices[4], which makes me think IANA should have given .dev the same treatment as .onion: by explicitly reserving them (but this is another topic to discuss).

[1]: https://github.com/basecamp/pow

[2]: https://github.com/laravel/valet

[3]: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7686.html

[4]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24606714

The first 1024 are reserved and you usually can freely choose the ones greater than that. You can also use .local for local domains.

Using .local is no longer recommended since it's used for mDNS. Apple devices in particular have issues resolving .local addresses.

Current best practice is to use a subdomain of a domain you control for internal stuff. Makes getting certs for internal hosts easier too if you can be bothered.

1-1024 are reserved for root so you can still technically use them. Port 0 is the only one truly reserved/impossible to used

My OpenWRT router uses .lan and that seems to work ok.

Especially with short hostnames like pi.lan :)

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