To .local or .com ?

[Doug Barton]

William Stacey wrote:
> 
> > http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/cs/Services/rfc/rfc-text/rfc2606.txt, which
> > reserves *.localhost for exactly this purpose.

> ?.  Thank you for the reference Doug.  However, by my read, .localhost is
> traditionally researved for pointing to the loop back IP address.  And the
> other domains (e.g. .test, .example, .invalid) are more there for
> documentation and testing purposes that may escape and be run against the
> global DNS.  I was refering to using a real gtld and second-level domain for
> internal use (i.e. mydomain.com.)  My example is mydomain.com being used
> locally and publicly (i.e. spit DNS) and that mydomain.com is actually
> registered.

	I think it's interesting that in all the commentary on my post so far,
everyone is willing to take one line of the RFC totally literally, and
to what I believe is an absurd conclusion, and yet they totally ignore
the paragraph above which states clearly and unequivocally the dangers
of just making up your own TLD. :) 

> I guess the real question is, what are the disadvantages (if any) of using a
> tld name for both internal DNS and external DNS?  

	There was a post just today about the problems associated with this
practice. I could give you numerous other examples of people who have
decided to name their machines in one of the hundreds of thousands of
domains I manage, and then those names, or other elements of their
internal network leaked out into the real internet. 

	In the end, you do what you want to do, and I hope that you're the only
one who has to bear the brunt of any mistakes you make. However, for
future reference you could save everyone a lot of time if you don't ask
for advice you don't really intend to take. :)

-- 
   "We have known freedom's price. We have shown freedom's power.
      And in this great conflict, ...  we will see freedom's victory."
	- George W. Bush, President of the United States
          State of the Union, January 28, 2002

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