11 ms·
.42: new experimental, all numeric top-level domain
- mooism2 16y agoUgh. Can we phase out IPv4 first?
- chaosmachine 16y agoI can only imagine how many regexes this will break.
- beaumartinez 16y agoNow they have three problems...
- m_myers 16y agoProbably not too many that .museum didn't break already. How many people use a regex that actually captures all possible URLS?
- moe 16y agoBefore anyone wonders: No, this isn't an official TLD. The domains you register there won't resolve for anyone unless they futz with their nameserver settings. I'm not sure what to make of this. Looks like a bunch of hackers got really bored and perhaps had a beer too many...
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- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- fdghjkh 16y agoSo what is an 'official' TLD? One that is controlled by an American government agency? Why can't we have our own TLDs - just like we have our own browsers and servers.
- ohashi 16y agoTechnically ICANN isn't a US gov't agency but they do have a MOU with the DOC.
- JonnieCache 16y ago>Looks like a bunch of hackers got really bored and perhaps had a beer too many... Many, many excellent projects are birthed this way. I can only hope that one day, when I get drunk, my first instinct will be to start my own TLD. Right now, that generally isn't the foremost thing on my mind four pints in...
- manvsmachine 16y agoJust a thought: maybe that's a feature, not a bug. Seems like a quick and dirty way to put up a site that people couldn't get to unless they're already know what they're looking for (which would imply that you want them to find it). Probably not the intent, but I'm kind of intrigued by the idea of it essentially being an Internet stash house.
- rpledge 16y agoSo if my IP is XXX.XXX.XXX.42 I can expect misconfigured clients to be trying to connect to me constantly? What could possible go wrong!
- zck 16y agoWell, only if someone tries to go to http://XXX.XXX.XXX.42 http://XXX.XXX.XXX.42, which seems rare. I can't think of a way to tell whether XXX.XXX.XXX.42 is an IP or a website from that string alone. You could require that no subdomain has four "parts" (i.e., A.B.C.42), but that's harsh. You could require that somewhere in the URL for a four-part numeric-TLD URL there be a character. You could also require that at least one of the parts of A.B.C.D be X<0 or 255<X. The last two suggestions are more lighthanded, but harder to implement. They'd all rule out URLs like 1.2.3.4, though. Quick, register your favorite sequence! (http://oeis.org/ http://oeis.org/)
- etherealG 16y agoreading the rules from an rfc mentioned on the wiki, if XXX.XXX.XXX.42 is a valid IP address, the client should try to use that first, if not it should only then try to use DNS to resolve.
- zck 16y agoThat certainly works, but it seems like a large part of this market would want numeric-only URLs, and so you couldn't have e.g., 1.2.3.4, or 1.1.2.3, etc.
- nickknw 16y ago> but it seems like a large part of this market would want numeric-only URLs Except for maybe douglasadams.42 ;)
- qjz 16y agoReference: http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1123#page-13 http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1123#page-13 But note that the RFC assumes there will never be a numeric TLD. Furthermore, it suggests checking the string syntactically to determine if it's in dotted decimal form, remaining somewhat ambiguous about what to do if the hostname looks like IPv4, but the connection fails (it seems unwise to do a DNS lookup for every IPv4 address that's offline). Since IPv4 is relatively easy to validate, it would have made a lot more sense for a numeric TLD to select a number outside the range of 0-255, such as 4200. Then it's obvious that 1.2.3.4200 is a hostname (or harmless typo), and not an IP address.
- TamDenholm 16y agoPerhaps the 42registry should try to get openDNS to support .42, that would certainly open up a MUCH larger amount of people that its available to, its also reasonably easy to change to using openDNS servers.
- jackolas 16y agoopenDNS has little to do with actual NIC stuff. See openNIC for actual alternative root stuff.
- simias 16y ago> WHY we do it > Because a numeric TLD is something new. As far as we know, it has never been tested out in the open. > Because it means being independent from ICANN, and we believe this to be an important aspect of the experiment. > Because we CAN. And "we" also means YOU. Technically, the experiment works. It is not officially endorsed by the powers that be, but it Point 1 is pretty equivalent to #3 "because we can", I don't think we're running out of alphabetical TLDs so I don't get the purpose of the experiment (If it ain't broke...). Point 2 I don't understand, why do you need a numerical TLD to be independent from ICANN? Why no go for ".foo"?
- archangel_one 16y agoAs I read it, because ICANN have apparently disallowed numeric TLDs so they don't expect they'll be allocating .42 anytime soon. Whereas ICANN might decide that .foo sounds nice and hand that out to someone, and then you wouldn't be able to figure out which registry to resolve the address against. It's not foolproof of course.
- rick_2047 16y agoWhy 42. Most of the early would be hackers and geeks and a prime number would seem way better.
- dlib 16y agoDouglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide comes to mind. 42 is the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything. I guess many hackers will get the reference. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrases_from_The_Hitchhikers_Guide_to_the_Galaxy#The_number_42 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrases_from_The_Hitchhikers_Gu...
- edanm 16y ago42 is probably the most famous "geek-number", from Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/42_(number) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/42_(number)
- JonnieCache 16y agoWhy 42? “The answer to this is very simple. It was a joke. It had to be a number, an ordinary, smallish number, and I chose that one. Binary representations, base thirteen, Tibetan monks are all complete nonsense. I sat at my desk, stared into the garden and thought '42 will do'. I typed it out. End of story.” Adams described his choice as 'a completely ordinary number, a number not just divisible by two but also six and seven. In fact it's the sort of number that you could without any fear introduce to your parents' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrases_from_The_Hitchhikers_Guide_to_the_Galaxy#The_number_42 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrases_from_The_Hitchhikers_Gu...
- lukev 16y agoOf course, he would say that.
- andrewmwatson 16y agohitchhiker's guide to the galaxy? dur.
- cytzol 16y agoRemember nic.d [0]? Its domain was 'nic.d,' a secret site was at '__._', and someone "registered" '☠.d' and '(>^_(7.)7'. 0: http://viewsourcecode.org/why/redhanded/cult/whoNicDOffWithTheYummyJunkDomains.html http://viewsourcecode.org/why/redhanded/cult/whoNicDOffWithT...
- dedward 16y agosplit-DNS is not the answer.
- gimpf 16y agoThat depends very much on the question. If I just want THE ANSWER as my tld, and care about nothing else, then it IS the answer.
- rst 16y agoThe really interesting thing here is the alternate DNS root that hosts the gimmick TLD. But it's not the first (remember AlterNIC?). Getting involved with this will teach you about DNS, and that's probably the best reason to do it --- but there are risks. (Frex, you're implicitly trusting whoever's running it to direct you back to the mainstream root servers for ".com", and not to an alternate ".com" on which selected sites are directed through password-harvesting proxies.)
- tonyskn 16y agoThey do not seem to be hosting an alternate root themselves. They rely on http://wiki.global-anycast.net/index.php/Main_Page http://wiki.global-anycast.net/index.php/Main_Page
- endtime 16y agoOh, well if the person you're worried might redirect you to a hostile site says they won't, I guess you're safe.
- cosmicray 16y agoso who owns 42.42.42.42 ? (which is the obvious candidate for the root DNS server)
- enduser 16y agothe correct question is 'whois 42.42.42.42'. answer: sk telecom (sktelecom.com). sk = south korea.
- jws 16y agoNow you can find all of the software that used a regex on [.0-9]+ to decide if you gave them an IP or a name. I would never have done that… on any software that is still in service, to my knowledge. Edit: The right way is not to try to determine which it is, pass it to inet_pton() on the assumption that it is a numeric address. If that fails, then pass it in to getaddrinfo() to let DNS or whatever the host uses for names have a crack at it. gethostbyname is obsolete now.
- abraham 16y agoYou can also use OpenNIC and get .geek, .free, .bbs, .parody, .oss, .indy, .fur, .ing, .micro, .dyn and .gopher domains. http://www.opennicproject.org/ http://www.opennicproject.org/
- joksnet 16y agoThere are some other networks around: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_network_42 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_network_42
- kilian 16y agoI remember in the late 90s (when I was just out of the single digits) Dutch computer hobby magazines would regularly feature articles about the "alternet" or the "dark net", where they'd explain how you could visit so many more sites beyond the "normal" internet that were secret, "illegal" and exciting. I'll never forget the screenshot they printed of a website with a photo of a sea and "Welcome to the atlantic ocean" on it: http://atlantic.ocean http://atlantic.ocean.