2 Jun
2026
2 Jun
'26
5:44 p.m.
On Tue, 2 Jun 2026 at 13:44, Dave Cridland <dave(a)cridland.net> wrote:
Goffi's response on Github, verbatim, with my response here (only):
Yeah, .internal is not actually stated as reserved by RFC 6762, in
fact it specifically says "We do not recommend use of unregistered
top-level domains at all". It just lists '.internal' among a bunch of
names which have traditionally been used for private networks. Using
it risks conflicts with private servers on such networks.
Hi @dwd thanks for your feedbacks (very valuable, as always).
Thanks for the rapid response!
* I've chosen .internal because it's reserved for private application use
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.internal,
https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6762/#appendix-G) actually to avoid accidental reach of
a real server. But you're right that on private networks it can be an issue. Your
xid.xmpp.org proposal can be a solution. I would like to have more inputs on it before
changing though.
My thinking is that if ".internal" is in use on private networks as a
free-for-all, rather than having any global meaning. From RFC 6762, it's listed
amongst "names which do not have meaning in the global context". The "proper" way of doing this would be to
use a subdomain of a TLD like .arpa, or potentially make our own reserved one via the IETF
like ".onion", though I seem to recall that would be hard.
Indeed, I doubt a reserved TLD would be approved for this
specification, but given that you mentioned .onion it's worth noting
that RFC 9476 did specify '.alt' for non-DNS usage.
Regards,
Matthew