
.42: new experimental, all numeric top-level domain - tonyskn
http://wiki.42registry.org/page/Main_Page
======
moe
Before anyone wonders: No, this isn't an official TLD. The domains you
register there won't resolve for anyone unless they futz with their nameserver
settings.

I'm not sure what to make of this. Looks like a bunch of hackers got really
bored and perhaps had a beer too many...

~~~
fdghjkh
So what is an 'official' TLD? One that is controlled by an American government
agency?

Why can't we have our own TLDs - just like we have our own browsers and
servers.

~~~
ohashi
Technically ICANN isn't a US gov't agency but they do have a MOU with the DOC.

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rpledge
So if my IP is XXX.XXX.XXX.42 I can expect misconfigured clients to be trying
to connect to me constantly? What could possible go wrong!

~~~
zck
Well, only if someone tries to go to <http://XXX.XXX.XXX.42>, which seems
rare.

I can't think of a way to tell whether XXX.XXX.XXX.42 is an IP or a website
from that string alone.

You could require that no subdomain has four "parts" (i.e., A.B.C.42), but
that's harsh.

You could require that somewhere in the URL for a four-part numeric-TLD URL
there be a character.

You could also require that at least one of the parts of A.B.C.D be X<0 or
255<X.

The last two suggestions are more lighthanded, but harder to implement. They'd
all rule out URLs like 1.2.3.4, though.

Quick, register your favorite sequence! (<http://oeis.org/>)

~~~
etherealG
reading the rules from an rfc mentioned on the wiki, if XXX.XXX.XXX.42 is a
valid IP address, the client should try to use that first, if not it should
only then try to use DNS to resolve.

~~~
qjz
Reference: <http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1123#page-13>

But note that the RFC assumes there will never be a numeric TLD. Furthermore,
it suggests checking the string syntactically to determine if it's in dotted
decimal form, remaining somewhat ambiguous about what to do if the hostname
looks like IPv4, but the connection fails (it seems unwise to do a DNS lookup
for every IPv4 address that's offline). Since IPv4 is relatively easy to
validate, it would have made a lot more sense for a numeric TLD to select a
number outside the range of 0-255, such as 4200. Then it's obvious that
1.2.3.4200 is a hostname (or harmless typo), and not an IP address.

~~~
metageek
There's also RFC-1738 (URL syntax), which says:

    
    
        host
            The fully qualified domain name of a network host, or its IP
            address as a set of four decimal digit groups separated by
            ".". Fully qualified domain names take the form as described
            in Section 3.5 of RFC 1034 [13] and Section 2.1 of RFC 1123
            [5]: a sequence of domain labels separated by ".", each domain
            label starting and ending with an alphanumerical character and
            possibly also containing "-" characters. The rightmost domain
            label will never start with a digit, though, which
            syntactically distinguishes all domain names from the IP
            addresses.
    

<http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1738.txt>

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chaosmachine
I can only imagine how many regexes this will break.

~~~
beaumartinez
Now they have three problems...

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TamDenholm
Perhaps the 42registry should try to get openDNS to support .42, that would
certainly open up a MUCH larger amount of people that its available to, its
also reasonably easy to change to using openDNS servers.

~~~
jackolas
openDNS has little to do with actual NIC stuff. See openNIC for actual
alternative root stuff.

------
cytzol
Remember nic.d [0]? Its domain was 'nic.d,' a secret site was at '__._', and
someone "registered" '☠.d' and '(>^_(7 _._ )7'.

0:
[http://viewsourcecode.org/why/redhanded/cult/whoNicDOffWithT...](http://viewsourcecode.org/why/redhanded/cult/whoNicDOffWithTheYummyJunkDomains.html)

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mooism2
Ugh. Can we phase out IPv4 first?

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rst
The really interesting thing here is the alternate DNS root that hosts the
gimmick TLD. But it's not the first (remember AlterNIC?).

Getting involved with this will teach you about DNS, and that's probably the
best reason to do it --- but there are risks. (Frex, you're implicitly
trusting whoever's running it to direct you back to the mainstream root
servers for ".com", and not to an alternate ".com" on which selected sites are
directed through password-harvesting proxies.)

~~~
tonyskn
They do not seem to be hosting an alternate root themselves. They rely on
<http://wiki.global-anycast.net/index.php/Main_Page>

~~~
endtime
Oh, well if the person you're worried might redirect you to a hostile site
says they won't, I guess you're safe.

------
simias
> WHY we do it

> Because a numeric TLD is something new. As far as we know, it has never been
> tested out in the open. > Because it means being independent from ICANN, and
> we believe this to be an important aspect of the experiment. > Because we
> CAN. And "we" also means YOU. Technically, the experiment works. It is not
> officially endorsed by the powers that be, but it

Point 1 is pretty equivalent to #3 "because we can", I don't think we're
running out of alphabetical TLDs so I don't get the purpose of the experiment
(If it ain't broke...).

Point 2 I don't understand, why do you need a _numerical_ TLD to be
independent from ICANN? Why no go for ".foo"?

~~~
archangel_one
As I read it, because ICANN have apparently disallowed numeric TLDs so they
don't expect they'll be allocating .42 anytime soon. Whereas ICANN might
decide that .foo sounds nice and hand that out to someone, and then you
wouldn't be able to figure out which registry to resolve the address against.
It's not foolproof of course.

------
kilian
I remember in the late 90s (when I was just out of the single digits) Dutch
computer hobby magazines would regularly feature articles about the "alternet"
or the "dark net", where they'd explain how you could visit so many more sites
beyond the "normal" internet that were secret, "illegal" and exciting.

I'll never forget the screenshot they printed of a website with a photo of a
sea and "Welcome to the atlantic ocean" on it: <http://atlantic.ocean>.

------
abraham
You can also use OpenNIC and get .geek, .free, .bbs, .parody, .oss, .indy,
.fur, .ing, .micro, .dyn and .gopher domains.

<http://www.opennicproject.org/>

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jws
Now you can find all of the software that used a regex on [.0-9]+ to decide if
you gave them an IP or a name.

I would never have done that… on any software that is still in service, to my
knowledge.

Edit: The right way is not to try to determine which it is, pass it to
inet_pton() on the assumption that it is a numeric address. If that fails,
then pass it in to getaddrinfo() to let DNS or whatever the host uses for
names have a crack at it. gethostbyname is obsolete now.

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cosmicray
so who owns 42.42.42.42 ? (which is the obvious candidate for the root DNS
server)

~~~
enduser
the correct question is 'whois 42.42.42.42'. answer: sk telecom
(sktelecom.com). sk = south korea.

------
joksnet
There are some other networks around:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_network_42>

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dedward
split-DNS is not the answer.

~~~
gimpf
That depends very much on the question. If I just want THE ANSWER as my tld,
and care about nothing else, then it IS the answer.

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rick_2047
Why 42. Most of the early would be hackers and geeks and a prime number would
seem way better.

~~~
edanm
42 is probably the most famous "geek-number", from Hitchiker's Guide to the
Galaxy.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/42_(number)>

~~~
JonnieCache
Why 42?

“The answer to this is very simple. It was a joke. It had to be a number, an
ordinary, smallish number, and I chose that one. Binary representations, base
thirteen, Tibetan monks are all complete nonsense. I sat at my desk, stared
into the garden and thought '42 will do'. I typed it out. End of story.”

Adams described his choice as 'a completely ordinary number, a number not just
divisible by two but also six and seven. In fact it's the sort of number that
you could without any fear introduce to your parents'

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrases_from_The_Hitchhikers_Gu...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrases_from_The_Hitchhikers_Guide_to_the_Galaxy#The_number_42)

~~~
lukev
Of course, he _would_ say that.

