Unpaid DNS TLDs
Recommended TLDs
I recommend the ICANN resolution protected TLDs.
Ordinary DNS software can serve them normally.
.internal
.home
.corp
.mail
ICANN Resolution Protected TLDs
ICANN — Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
The home/corp/mail trinity have been in continuous use by thousands of networks for decades. ICANN resolved to defer delegation of those TLDs indefinitely.
As part of this commitment, ICANN organization published in July 2014 the Name Collision Occurrence Management Framework.
Guided by recommendations in reports from the SSAC and JAS Global Advisors, the Framework recommended that the delegation of the strings
.HOME,.CORP, and
.internal is new, but permanently reserved.
Resolved (2024.07.29.06), the Board reserves
.INTERNALfrom delegation in the DNS root zone permanently to provide for its use in private-use applications.The Board recommends that efforts be undertaken to raise awareness of its reservation for this purpose through the organization’s technical outreach.
IETF DNS Special-Use Names
home.arpa. is the current recommended domain for residential home networks.
home.arpa.
.example
example.com.
example.net.
example.org.
Undelegated TLDs
ICANN could delegate these and they would enter the global DNS namespace, causing collisions.
.lan
.private
What about .local?
See Do Not Use Local for Authoritative DNS.
References
IANA - Special-Use Domain Names