IICANN reserves .internal for private use at the DNS level

[J65nko]

From https://www.theregister.com/2024/08/...rnal_ratified/:

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has agreed to reserve the .internal top-level domain so it can become the equivalent to using the 10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12, and 192.168.0.0/16 IPv4 address blocks for internal networks.

Those blocks are reserved for private use by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, which requires they never appear on the public internet.

As The Register reported when we spotted the .internal proposal in January, ICANN wanted something similar but for DNS, by defining a top-level domain that would never be delegated in the global domain name system (DNS) root.

Doing so would mean hosts using the TLD could never be accessed on the open internet – achieving the org's goal of delivering a domain that could be used for internal networks without fear of conflict or confusion.