As it looks like the number of DNS Top Level Domains are just going to proliferate in the near future, what's your guys views on a good one to use locally on an RFC 1918 private network in order to prevent a future name collision issue?

.local is the most obvious one but as that was stolen by Apple for mDNS/rendezvous use it's probably wise to avoid it now.

What do you guys use? Is there a defacto standard for this?

AFAIK you can use any names you like on your private LAN, including .local if you so choose.

I just use XXX.home.net

No problems after 10yrs

I name mine after myself XXX.Bowers.Net

could be anything really, even if you would use yahoo.com or google.com :P
but.. then you would have a problem, surfing either of them, since they will route to your own machines :P
(dns records and/or wins e.g. hosted locally)

but it's allowed, it can be done.. it your freedom to do so.

But for saveguides...

.local
.lan
.internal
.<fictional tld here>

is the best way to go, if you would not encounter resolving problems of existing domains you may want to visit.

note: i think you want to use your own dns server for resolving rather than a third party one (e.g. isp dns) right?

1 members found this post helpful.

I was just curious what people thought best practice was. As far as I can tell, from reading the replies here and other stuff on the subject it looks like there's no one standard that people are adopting (most seem to still be using .local, so I'll just stick with my invented tld and not worry about it until I hit a problem (if I ever do)

Thank you, to those who responded.

All of the above comments are incorrect.

It DOES matter what you call your local domain. .local is a reserved name for mDNS and so should be avoided. You may get a delay in resolving a FQDN with .local in it. Technically it would be invalid for use on a private lan.

Names like .lan or .home are better but the best practice would be to use a genuine registered domain name for both inside and outside your network. Reason being should the domain every become a real internet domain, you would end up in a lot of trouble.

I know this is an old thread, but thought I'd add my 2c too....

Looking at RFC6761 (paragraph 6.2), it would seem that .test would be the best choice if you want to avoid the possibility of future conflicts, and don't want to use a registered domain name.

Any thoughts on / experience with this?