5 ms·

I never understood why ccTLDs of some third-world countries became popular for hosting production code. There is a real risk of somebody stealing your domain du

by foepys 9y ago

I never understood why ccTLDs of some third-world countries became popular for hosting production code. There is a real risk of somebody stealing your domain due to vulnerable infrastructure and incompetence at the organizations that sometimes employ less than 10 people. The notable takeover of the .io ccTLD by Matthew Bryant [1] should have been a wakeup call for everybody. 1: https://thehackerblog.com/the-io-error-taking-control-of-all-io-domains-with-a-targeted-registration/index.html https://thehackerblog.com/the-io-error-taking-control-of-all...

nkrisc 9y ago
> I never understood why ccTLDs of some third-world countries became popular Simple vanity.
- tschellenbach 9y ago
  I think it's also about awareness. Most people don't know that IO or other smaller TLDs are unreliable.
  - CamperBob2 9y ago
    They aren't unreliable. This article blows up a single minor incident into a controversy of epic proportions.
    - sokoloff 9y ago
      The incident was far from minor IMO. I think .io has had 6+ hours of downtime (full or partial/non-trivial) this year, long enough to push the annual availability down to 99.93% from what I recall from memory of reading post-mortems. That was enough to spur us to begin planning to move production traffic off our .io domain as well.
    - dx034 9y ago
      Did any of the large TLDs (.com/.net/.de/.fr/.co.uk) have an outage like that in the last decade? Not being available for several hours can severely damage businesses. Startups that haven't built trust yet as well as some large companies. Imagine a bank's website not being available for several hours. It doesn't matter if it's a DNS issue, people would start panicking very quickly.
- dboreham 9y ago
  That's the only reason I use them. Since .am (Armenia) allows anyone to register a domain I can have boreh.am and hence be d@boreh.am. Still haven't got around to putting up content at the web site at http://d.boreh.am http://d.boreh.am :(
cloverich 9y ago
One good explanation is that people simply aren't aware of the implications of purchasing those domains. Personally this is the first I'd realized .io was both 1) unreliable and 2) a country code.
- kzrdude 9y ago
  All two letter TLDs are country codes.
  - scandinavian 9y ago
    .eu is not a country.
    - fron 9y ago
      Correct, .eu is a ccTLD, not a whole country. Glad you're able to see the difference. If you're going to be pedantic, at least do it properly.
dboreham 9y ago
Agreed. I looked at it for one of our properties a few years ago and discovered that the legal ownership of the domain wouldn't really be ours long term. I'd prefer to stick with US-enforced property rights, warts and all.
brlewis 9y ago
The main motivation is how hard it is to get a good .com domain name.
- SamBam 9y ago
  Exactly. That's why .co was/is popular: it's like .com, and it's even shorter! The fact that it's Columbia's country code is not at the top of most people's minds.
  - dx034 9y ago
    Does anyone know how reliable .co is? Who manages the domain? I have a few .co domains (because the .com was bought by some reseller who wants to have >$1,000 for the domain) but somehow wary using them for production.
abiox 9y ago
> I never understood why (...) scarcity of available domain names under the major tlds, imo.
joshmn 9y ago
Stop giving them ideas!
Jwarder 9y ago
Speaking of questionable TLDs: does anyone know what happened to Togo's .tg registry? I see that there are bunch of SSL certificates revoked due to "registry problems" [1] this month, but I haven't seen any news or warnings about it. I imagine the registrar just doesn't check for names that would be nice targets, but it would be nice to know for sure. 1: https://crt.sh/mozilla-onecrl https://crt.sh/mozilla-onecrl
joecool1029 9y ago
>I never understood why ccTLDs of some third-world countries became popular for hosting production code. I trust and support my brothers in Grenada.

by foepys 9y ago

nkrisc 9y ago

> I never understood why ccTLDs of some third-world countries became popular Simple vanity.

tschellenbach 9y ago
I think it's also about awareness. Most people don't know that IO or other smaller TLDs are unreliable.
- CamperBob2 9y ago
  They aren't unreliable. This article blows up a single minor incident into a controversy of epic proportions.
  - sokoloff 9y ago
    The incident was far from minor IMO. I think .io has had 6+ hours of downtime (full or partial/non-trivial) this year, long enough to push the annual availability down to 99.93% from what I recall from memory of reading post-mortems. That was enough to spur us to begin planning to move production traffic off our .io domain as well.
  - dx034 9y ago
    Did any of the large TLDs (.com/.net/.de/.fr/.co.uk) have an outage like that in the last decade? Not being available for several hours can severely damage businesses. Startups that haven't built trust yet as well as some large companies. Imagine a bank's website not being available for several hours. It doesn't matter if it's a DNS issue, people would start panicking very quickly.
dboreham 9y ago
That's the only reason I use them. Since .am (Armenia) allows anyone to register a domain I can have boreh.am and hence be d@boreh.am. Still haven't got around to putting up content at the web site at http://d.boreh.am http://d.boreh.am :(

cloverich 9y ago

One good explanation is that people simply aren't aware of the implications of purchasing those domains. Personally this is the first I'd realized .io was both 1) unreliable and 2) a country code.

kzrdude 9y ago
All two letter TLDs are country codes.
- scandinavian 9y ago
  .eu is not a country.
  - fron 9y ago
    Correct, .eu is a ccTLD, not a whole country. Glad you're able to see the difference. If you're going to be pedantic, at least do it properly.

dboreham 9y ago

Agreed. I looked at it for one of our properties a few years ago and discovered that the legal ownership of the domain wouldn't really be ours long term. I'd prefer to stick with US-enforced property rights, warts and all.

brlewis 9y ago

The main motivation is how hard it is to get a good .com domain name.

SamBam 9y ago
Exactly. That's why .co was/is popular: it's like .com, and it's even shorter! The fact that it's Columbia's country code is not at the top of most people's minds.
- dx034 9y ago
  Does anyone know how reliable .co is? Who manages the domain? I have a few .co domains (because the .com was bought by some reseller who wants to have >$1,000 for the domain) but somehow wary using them for production.

abiox 9y ago

> I never understood why (...) scarcity of available domain names under the major tlds, imo.

joshmn 9y ago

Stop giving them ideas!

Jwarder 9y ago

Speaking of questionable TLDs: does anyone know what happened to Togo's .tg registry? I see that there are bunch of SSL certificates revoked due to "registry problems" [1] this month, but I haven't seen any news or warnings about it. I imagine the registrar just doesn't check for names that would be nice targets, but it would be nice to know for sure. 1: https://crt.sh/mozilla-onecrl https://crt.sh/mozilla-onecrl

joecool1029 9y ago

>I never understood why ccTLDs of some third-world countries became popular for hosting production code. I trust and support my brothers in Grenada.