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This is a valid domain name (remove www)

ai

61–70 of 75 posts

Re: This is a valid domain name (remove www)

#61
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not correct. The TLD alone is a valid domain name, although in most cases it must be followed by a trailing dot. "ai." is valid, "ai" may not be.

It is a valid domain in the technical DNS sense. But practically speaking, each TLD has "ns" entries in the root zone database, not "A", "CNAME", etc. entries. This is just a guy who registered www under a TLD that's it.

This has nothing to do with the "www" subdomain. I assure you that the unix "host" tool is not trying to guess subdomains if the lookup fails:

  $ host "ai."
  ai has address 209.59.119.34
  ai mail is handled by 10 mail.offshore.ai.

Re: This is a valid domain name (remove www)

#63
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not correct. The TLD alone is a valid domain name, although in most cases it must be followed by a trailing dot. "ai." is valid, "ai" may not be.

It is a valid domain in the technical DNS sense. But practically speaking, each TLD has "ns" entries in the root zone database, not "A", "CNAME", etc. entries. This is just a guy who registered www under a TLD that's it.

There's a bunch of TLDs with A records, even Google used to point .dev to 127.0.0.53 for a while.

Re: This is a valid domain name (remove www)

#64
post #5

n@ai is also a valid email address. Owned by a guy named Ian.

I suppose it should be possible to get an MX record to work with a root domain, but that person that has it would have to probably work for or be the owner.

MX records fallback to A records, so ~10ish TLDs work this way already.

Re: This is a valid domain name (remove www)

#65
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a valid domain in the technical DNS sense. But practically speaking, each TLD has "ns" entries in the root zone database, not "A", "CNAME", etc. entries. This is just a guy who registered www under a TLD that's it.

This has nothing to do with the "www" subdomain. I assure you that the unix "host" tool is not trying to guess subdomains if the lookup fails: $ host "ai." ai has address 209.59.119.34 ai mail is handled by 10 mail.offshore.ai.

I'm not saying "ai" is not a valid domain. I'm just guessing why people get to a website when they just type "ai".

I'm on my phone now, if you search for the ai entry in the root zone file (https://www.iana.org/domains/root/files) you should find that IP returned by your host command.

Can you try curling "ai" and see if the content returned (if any) is the same as the one from "www.ai"?

Re: This is a valid domain name (remove www)

#66
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has nothing to do with the "www" subdomain. I assure you that the unix "host" tool is not trying to guess subdomains if the lookup fails: $ host "ai." ai has address 209.59.119.34 ai mail is handled by 10 mail.offshore.ai.

I'm not saying "ai" is not a valid domain. I'm just guessing why people get to a website when they just type "ai". I'm on my phone now, if you search for the ai entry in the root zone file ( https://www.iana.org/domains/root/files ) you should find that IP returned by your host command. Can you try curling "ai" and see if the content returned (if any) is the same as the one from "www.ai"?

They are the same, but that's not really the point. www has been registered in addition to the entries for the root TLD. You said "the internals of the browser that automatically adds a www in front" - that's irrelevant. host isn't doing that, curl isn't doing that.

Re: This is a valid domain name (remove www)

#67
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying "ai" is not a valid domain. I'm just guessing why people get to a website when they just type "ai". I'm on my phone now, if you search for the ai entry in the root zone file ( https://www.iana.org/domains/root/files ) you should find that IP returned by your host command. Can you try curling "ai" and see if the content returned (if any) is the same as the one from "www.ai"?

They are the same, but that's not really the point. www has been registered in addition to the entries for the root TLD. You said "the internals of the browser that automatically adds a www in front" - that's irrelevant. host isn't doing that, curl isn't doing that.

You are right, they added a A record in the root zone file. I didn't know it was allowed.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31690379

Re: This is a valid domain name (remove www)

#68
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a valid domain in the technical DNS sense. But practically speaking, each TLD has "ns" entries in the root zone database, not "A", "CNAME", etc. entries. This is just a guy who registered www under a TLD that's it.

There's a bunch of TLDs with A records, even Google used to point .dev to 127.0.0.53 for a while.

You are right I didn't know it was allowed

Re: This is a valid domain name (remove www)

#69
post #5

n@ai is also a valid email address. Owned by a guy named Ian.

I have a very short email address (in the form a@aa.aa) and I haven't found anywhere that doesn't accept it - except for humans, who often refuse to believe it is real and will insist on a longer one. (I have a backup longer one.)

I have a similar one and it has been rejected many times. I still write to the company but nobody gives a shit. I also tried on twitter.

Surprisingly people are fine with it, I think that this is thanks to social media handlers such as @wazoo - people group all these together as "email and such"

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