
Ask HN: How can a domain not have a TLD? - enjoyyourlife
Why do websites such as http:&#x2F;&#x2F;user, http:&#x2F;&#x2F;example, and http:&#x2F;&#x2F;us work?
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tlb
They don't resolve for me and most people on the public internet, but your DNS
service may be configured differently. In corporate environments, bare names
(like [http://wiki](http://wiki)) are often used, so DNS supports it. If you
use a cheap ISP, they may try to monetize typos by making bare words resolve
to a page of ads.

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jolmg
[http://user](http://user) works for me on Firefox, directing me to user.com.
However, when I look at the DNS requests, my DNS server says there is no such
name as "user". Right after that, a request is made for "www.user.com" then
"user.com". I think Firefox is simply guessing the TLD in this case when just
trying the name as provided fails and it's a TLD with no SLD (second-level
domain).

That said, [http://ai](http://ai) does work at the DNS level. It's not that
the domain has no TLD, but rather that the name is just the TLD.

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pedasmith
Take a look at
[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3397](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3397) for
one way to get this set up. Your DHCP server can give you a list of host
suffixes to try whenever you have a short name.

