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Posted by todsacerdoti 4/10/2025

.localhost Domains(inclouds.space)
302 points | 196 commentspage 6
delduca 4/10/2025|
I do the same at work (on premise machines on a private LAN).
bootcat 4/10/2025||
wow this is hitting hacker news front page ? if we can change the hosts file - I want to propose you can have any domain name for local services.
ipkstef 4/10/2025||
you guys don't just memorize all your local ip's?
justin_oaks 4/10/2025|
In my day we memorized IPs AND ports. 10.24.67.22:78342 was to access our bug tracker and 192.168.240.17:21282 was for our CVS repository!

Seriously though, one of the first things I did when I was hired as the sysadmin for a small company was to eliminate the need for memorizing/bookmarking ip-port combos. I moved everything to standard ports and DNS names.

Any services running on the same machine that needed the same ports were put behind a reverse proxy with virtual hosts to route to the right service. Each IP address was assigned an easy-to-remember DNS name. And each service was setup with TLS/SSL instead of the bare HTTP they had previously.

nhance 4/10/2025||
As a reminder, lacolhost.com and all subdomains will forever resolve to localhost (well for as long as I'm around at least)
jeroenhd 4/10/2025||
> (well for as long as I'm around at least)

Rather big caveat IMO. As a side note, your domain doesn't seem to have an AAAA record (which [.]localhost binds to by default on most of my machines, at least).

koolba 4/10/2025||
> As a reminder, lacolhost.com …

I’m assuming that typo is intentional?

gijoeyguerra 4/11/2025||
excellent job.
mjevans 4/10/2025||
Once again, .local should _never_ have been assigned to any organization. Just like .lan should also be reserved like the private IP blocks.
WorldMaker 4/10/2025||
.local wasn't assigned to an organization, it was assigned to mDNS: multicast DNS. mDNS is the ask everyone on the local network if they like to be called that name which used to be better known under Apple's brand/trademark Bonjour, but now is a true standard.
mjevans 4/10/2025||
Yes, but why couldn't they have assigned .mdns for that instead? Or even better given it it's own .arpa domain? E.G. .mdns(.arpa) rather than the .local TLD? ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.arpa )
WorldMaker 4/10/2025||
Because .local looks nice and is a better name/explainer for what mDNS does than the standard name or the old brand name? Because the old brand was already using .local even if Apple Devices were somewhat a minority at the time?

At this point a lot of TLD changes are going to step on someone's project or home/business/private network. I think .local is a good name for mDNS. I appreciate why you maybe aren't happy with it, but don't share your concern.

mjevans 4/10/2025||
Those are both reasons that .local should be static DNS on the _network_ like localhost is a standard name for the loopback address(es).

There's no reason .mdns or .mdns.arpa couldn't have just been added to the default domains search list (the list of suffixes tried for non FQDN searches); which given it ISN'T a nice human obvious word to append wouldn't have conflicted with anyone who'd already had a .local at the time, and anyone else in the future who thinks an obvious phrase like .local would not be in use by some other resolver system.

XorNot 4/10/2025||
Don't we have ".internal" for that?
jeroenhd 4/10/2025||
The TLD hasn't been registered, but it has been added to the list of reserved names so effectively that's the domain you should use if you don't want to use real names.

.local also works fine, of course, if you enable mDNS and don't try to use normal DNS.