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Memories of .us

computer.rip

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Re: Memories of .us

#51

Post by cortesoft »

morcus wrote: post #9

> Technically speaking, the top of the DNS tree, the DNS root, is a null label referenced by a trailing dot. It's analogous to the '/' at the beginning of POSIX file paths. "gatech.edu" really should be written as "gatech.edu." to make it absolute rather than relative I have never seen this, but I just tried it and it seems like browsers, even today will happily handle such URLs. Neat!

If you work much with DNS, you will know about this. It is known as a FQDN, or a "fully qualified domain name", when the name ends with a .

When you don't use a FQDN, your DNS system is going to try to figure out if you mean a FQDN or actually belong to a subdomain.

On *nix, your /etc/resolv.conf file can have a "search" entries for search domains... that means that a lookup for "foo" will check "foo.bar.com" if "search bar.com" is in your /etc/resolv.conf

This does mean your query could end up making multiple queries to determine if you meant foo. OR foo.bar.com

You can configure how the machine makes the guesses with something called ndots... if you add "ndots 3" to your etc/resolv.conf, then your DNS queries will only try treating the domain as a FQDN if it has at least 3 dots... so for example, it would skip querying for foo as a TLD because it has no dots, and assume you mean "foo.bar.com", saving an unneeded DNS query.

This usually doesn't matter to people, but it can have big performance implications for things like Kubernetes, with lots of .svc.local bits being left off of internal queries and relying on search domains; by increasing the ndots, you avoid a ton of wasted queries.

Re: Memories of .us

#52

Post by zokier »

stephen_g wrote: post #16

It did always make me really annoyed they didn’t deprecate .gov, .edu and .mil and transition to moving those under .us (as .gov.us, .edu.us and .mil.us). Having them as basically US-only just reeks of American exceptionalism which most of the world finds very distasteful.

I'm annoyed that Postel didn't deprecate .com/.net/.org after ccTLDs were introduced. Would have made DNS so much cleaner and at least have a chance of making the hierarchy/tld somewhat meaningful.

Re: Memories of .us

#53

Post by toast0 »

AnnikaL wrote: post #41

The notion that community colleges can't use .edu no longer seems true. When I took community college classes, I got an @my.smccd.edu email address.

The rules changed several times.

My community college was occ.cccd.edu when I attended, where cccd.edu was the community college district, and they had registered their domain in 1993, but now the individual colleges have their own domain names, registered in 2002, 2004 and 2007. But there definitely was a time where only 4 year schools and museums were getting new .edus

Re: Memories of .us

#54

Post by toast0 »

aftbit wrote: post #33

Wow yes, I also remember my high school's k12 domain name! What an interesting trip down memory lane; wonderful, like most of computer.rip! Is it possible to register e.g. X.ca.us domains today? What are the criteria required to do so?

> Is it possible to register e.g. X.ca.us domains today? What are the criteria required to do so?

I don't think so. Godaddy won't delegate new third level domains, and I don't think the second level (states) were ever delegated?? But if you can find a city.ca.us that is delegated and that person/organization is willing to register a new name, you could maybe do that.

Re: Memories of .us

#55

Post by orthoxerox »

kccqzy wrote: post #46
musicale wrote: post #34

> "gatech.edu" really should be written as "gatech.edu." https://www.gatech.edu./ does seem to work for me. It is interesting that URLs often contain two hierarchies in opposite directions: https://something.myorg.org/something/more/specific/

Yeah of course adding the extra dot will work. The dot at the end simply means do not try to append the local search domain. Interestingly bad “security” software will often block domains without the trailing dot but permit the one with the trailing dot. The problem of having two hierarchies in opposite directions means that it is advantageous to store it while reversing one of the hierarchies. I think the earliest G…

Yes, that's how you're supposed to store URLs as keys in something like Cassandra.

Re: Memories of .us

#56

Post by phatskat »

kbbgl87 wrote: post #13
dependency_2x wrote: post #11

My school didn't have a domain name or even an email address, or even an internet connection. I think it had 1 or 2 BBC Micros though. I remember playing a game where you had to fire a cannon (choose angle and power) and hit something. Funny how memory works - I assumed I'd remember nothing as so long ago, but remember sitting in the room playing that game now, can't remember why I could though (why I had free access…

> a game where you had to fire a cannon (choose angle and power) and hit something. Scortched Earth?

Scorched Earth was such a fun game! Many hours were lost at our small home LAN parties playing SE and Quake/2/3

Re: Memories of .us

#59

Post by paduc »

If you want to create a subdomain, you need DNS delegation (authorization) from the owner/manager of the domain.

So if you want to register xyz.ci.pemberton.nj.us, you need to ask for DNS delegation from the owner/manager of ci.pemberton.nj.us or a higher level.

It's a lot easier to buy the xyz-ci-pemberton-nj.us domain.

Re: Memories of .us

#60

Post by bandie91 »

basch wrote: post #39
musicale wrote: post #34

> "gatech.edu" really should be written as "gatech.edu." https://www.gatech.edu./ does seem to work for me. It is interesting that URLs often contain two hierarchies in opposite directions: https://something.myorg.org/something/more/specific/

its not really two hierarchies, its just one written backwards for a while, and then forward. if you reverse the backwards part you get https://org.myorg.something./something/more/specific/ the dots separate computers or networks and the slashes separate folders.

well, more pedantically:

https://.org.myorg.something/something/more/specific/

you need the null-label on the left instead of the right.

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