What domain name to use for your home network

If a task only recurs less frequently like say every 3-5 years, it is more likely to be forgotten it is the same whether it is individual or companies.

I use `.zz`.

It's short, easy to type, and in order for that to be assigned out, we'd need an entirely new country to be created (one that decided the other bazillion free CCTLDs are not to their liking). And like you say, I only run into a problem if I decide I want to access things from said country.

Would I do this in any professional setting? Absolutely not. For my own stuff at home? The risk is pretty minimal and the work involved in updating if I ever have to is not too bad.

DHCP automatically registers everything under .zz, and I cname well-known things from .svc.zz to the appropriate hostname so I can hit, e.g., `blueiris.svc.zz` or `homeassistant.svc.zz`.

For SSL I just run my own CA.

They bound it to a sub domain of the company's main web site claiming that Microsoft (maybe something with Active Directory? Or Azure?) doesn't support any domains that you don't actually own.

I wouldn't be surprised if this is false because the people in charge of the domains think GoDaddy is awesome. Would love to hear an HN expert tell me if they're full of crap or not.

There are some more reserved domains in RFC 6761 (https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc6761) though:

- .test (Application software SHOULD NOT recognize test names as special, and SHOULD use test names as they would other domain names. [...] Caching DNS servers SHOULD recognize test names as special and SHOULD NOT, by default, attempt to look up NS records for them, or otherwise query authoritative DNS servers in an attempt to resolve test names. Instead, caching DNS servers SHOULD, by default, generate immediate negative responses for all such queries.)

- .localhost (Users are free to use localhost names as they would any other domain names. Users may assume that IPv4 and IPv6 address queries for localhost names will always resolve to the respective IP loopback address.)

- .invalid (Users are free to use "invalid" names as they would any other domain names. Users MAY assume that queries for "invalid" names will always return NXDOMAIN responses. Name resolution APIs and libraries SHOULD recognize "invalid" names as special and SHOULD always return immediate negative responses. Name resolution APIs SHOULD NOT send queries for "invalid" names to their configured caching DNS server(s).)

- .example, .example.com, .example.net (Users SHOULD understand that example names are reserved for use in documentation.)

Unfortunately, none of these address the same needs as .internal would.

So I could make foo.mylocal.com point to 127.0.0.1 or the printer, or anything else really.