ICANN Considers Using '127.0.53.53' To Tackle DNS Namespace Collisions

angry tapir writes "As the number of top-level domains undergoes explosive growth, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is studying ways to reduce the risk of traffic intended for internal network destinations ending up on the Internet via the Domain Name System. Proposals in a report produced on behalf of ICANN include preventing .mail, .home and .corp ever being Internet TLDs; allowing the forcible de-delegation of some second-level domains in emergencies; and returning 127.0.53.53 as an IP address in the hopes that sysadmins will flag and Google it."

Comments

Re:is 10.0.0.0/8 really needed to be private?

[squiggleslash]

This isn't the problem. As I understand it (and I've read the article multiple times and it's early in the morning so I may be getting it wrong), the problem is this:

1. ICANN is introducing new .TLDs (eg additions to .com, .net, .org) etc (we've known about this for a while, this isn't news.)
2. Common practice on private networks is to create and use an unused .TLD for the private network, for example ".internal", ".corp", etc. For example, your employer might, right now, be calling your workstation "pc117.nyoffice.intranet"
3. After analyzing global DNS hits, ICANN's researchers found that many/most of the new proposed .TLDs are already, apparently, in use by private entities for their private networks. You might ask how they know? Well, think in terms of a roaming laptop that upon connecting to a Wifi at Starbucks immediately, before the VPN is set up, tries to access "exchange-server.nyoffice.intranet". It makes the DNS lookup, and because the VPN isn't up yet, the DNS lookup goes to the global DNS servers, causing a bell to ring in ICANN's HQ (or something.)
4. ICANN needs to "do something" to alert people with private networks to change their TLDs, or else those people will, unintentionally, find themselves locked out of sites with the new TLD. (Cynical PoV: and this will decrease the value of the .TLDs themselves. Kerching!)

Now ICANN appears to believe that the best solution is to have the .TLDs return this odd 127.0.53.53 IP address instead of "domain not found" for all unknown domains, so that if a technie working for a company affected is roaming with their laptop, and they try to access "exchange-server.nyoffice.intranet" forgetting to put up the VPN, and ".intranet" is a new TLD, and they can't connect because the VPN isn't up, and they decide to check their Windows Event Logs to figure out why, then instead of "domain not found" which would immediately make them think "Oh wait, of course it can't be resolved, it's not a real domain and I'm not on the VPN", they'd see a weird IP address, and think "That's odd, let me Google that, there's obviously a problem with DNS."

(I think they'd have more luck if they made it a pair of real IP addresses, one A, one AAAA, pointing at a website that tells the roaming user the answer that they can report to a sysadmin, rather than forcing a sysadmin to Google something they may never become aware of because they may not roam in the first place, but to be honest, even that sounds like a bad idea, I'd rather IP addresses not be returned for invalid domains to begin with.)