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Can I create a top level TLD? (.michael for instance)

It appears that ICANN is allowing the creation of top level domains. Instead of 'registering' a domain, you would essentially be signing up to be a registrar (you'd be giving out registrations on your TLD).

1. How do they decide whether to accept/reject applications? (i.e. is notability a requirement precluding .michael for instance)
2. Can an existing business register a TLD, or is it only a more general organization (i.e. "the museum society" instead of the "NYC Natural History Museum")
3. How much does it cost?

What is a cookie-free domain?

What is a cookie-free domain? I've seen these words many times but I never understood what it is.

How do you register a domain without a TLD?

So I found this website that is visitable and does not have a TLD? Anyone got any idea how to do this?

Simple apache2 redirect from one domain to another

What I want to do is the following:

My domain xy.example.com no longer exists. Thus I want to do a simple redirect to the new domain abc.example.com. It should be a redirect, that also works when someone types in the browser bar http://xy.example.com/team.php - than it shoul redirect to http://abc.example.com/team.php

I've already tried a few things, but it didn't really work. What do I have to put in the Apache 2 config?

Can I use the character ñ in a sub-domain?

We are launching our website in Spanish and are probably going to call it

espanol.mydomain.com

Since the real spelling is español, ideally we would allow people to type español.mydomain.com.

Is that something that is possible today? Can we use this character in domains and sub-domains?

How the heck is http://to./ a valid domain name?

Apparently it's a URL shortener. It resolves just fine in Chrome and Firefox. How is this a valid top-level domain?

Update: for the people saying it's browser shenanigans, why is it that: http://com./ does not take me to: http://www.com/?

And, do browsers ever send you a response from some place other than what's actually up in the address bar? Aside from framesets and things like that, I thought browsers tried really hard to send you content only from the site in the address bar, to help guard against phishing.

Is there a site that can track all the domain names I own?

I've been using a spreadsheet to keep track of domain names. Is there a web service anywhere that maintains a domain name database and tracks all the domains we own? The most important feature is that it would have to remind me when it's time to renew, but it would also keep track of all the registrars in my life.

What is the difference between a hostname and a fully qualified domain name?

I am new to the world of setting up servers and am baffled by the term hostname and fully qualified domain name. For example, if I want to set up a server that hosts files on the local network i.e. a file server, what would I use a hostname such as myfileserver or something else? What if I wanted to set up a web server, mail server, etc that external users could access?

Why does Heroku warn against "naked" domain names?

I ran across this page in the Heroku docs...

Naked domains, also called bare or apex domains, are configured in DNS via A-records and have serious availability implications when used in highly available environments such as massive on-premise datacenters, cloud infrastructure services, and platforms like Heroku.

For maximum scalability and resiliency applications should avoid naked domains and instead rely solely on subdomain-based hostnames.

Does anyone here speak Enterprise? What are the "availability implications" they're warning about?

(I notice that http://stackoverflow.com works no problem, so evidently there are viable alternate philosophies on this issue.)

What's the meaning of logging in as "username@mydomain.com:something"

My Windows 2008 R2 machine is joined to a domain.

In the logon screen, if I type in "username@mydomain.com:something" as the username, I can still logon properly, what's the meaning of ":something" appended at the end?

I can even see the current user is displayed as "username@mydomain.com:something" in the switch user screen. Is it a feature in Windows? Or is it just a bug? If it is a feature, what's the difference between logging in as "username@mydomain.com" and logging in as "username@mydomain.com:something"?

Note that I tried different combinations like "mydomain\username:something" and "mydomain.com:something\username". None of them work except "username@mydomain.com:something".

Sept 10 2012 Update

RunAs problem raised by Justin is similar but not exactly the same as the problem that I want to solve. If you do

runas /user:username@mydomain.com:anything

you will get

RUNAS ERROR: Unable to acquire user password

I verified that RunAs doesn't even bother to call into LSA when seeing username@mydomain.com:anything as the username. RunAs should have done input validation and return error there.

WinLogon is different. It accepts this format of input and pass the "username@mydomain.com:anything" into LSA. I do see the LogonUserEx2 inside kerberos.dll got called. It's either there is a bug in WinLogon input validation logic or this is really an acceptable format for some hidden features.

Sept 26 2012 Update

I just submitted a case to Microsoft Premier Support. I will update here if I get any update from them.

Why is it a bad idea to use a customer email as the from address

I've got an application that emails users once they have filled in a form. It uses a no-reply@customerdomain.com as a from address. The customer wants it to use the email from the form as the from address which could be anything. I have been told that this is a bad idea due to spoofing/blacklisting and spam.

I feel really vague about the exact reason about why this is a bad idea particularly as i've got to try to counsel the client out of this. Can someone explain to me why this is a bad idea.

Interestingly the client has used a gmail account as the from address as a demo which not only works fine but has enabled the application to start sending emails (it wouldn't do it before with an email which was no-reply@customerdomain.com). Erm - what is going on. I'm told one thing and the opposite works.

Sorry - i know this is basic but I could find anything on a google search. Largely I think because I'm having trouble even framing the question.

EDIT

Thank you everyone - great answers. Interestingly the server sending the email and the mail box that it is going to are both behind the same firewall so the client says they are unconcerned about spam. Oh well.

If I own a domain do I own all of its sub domains?

If I own a domain do I own all of its sub domains?

For example if I purchase example.com, do I automatically own mail.example.com, blog.example.com, etc?

If I do not own the sub domains, can anyone buy mail.example.com if I own example.com? Do I have a right of first sale if someone tries to buy one of my sub domains?

Finally, do the answers to the above questions apply to all domains in all TLDs, like .org, .net, .ca, .name, etc?

Thank you.

EDIT: According to the .name agreement registration restrictions at

http://www.icann.org/en/about/agreements/registries/name/appendix-11-25mar11-en.htm

an individual can register a .name domain only if the domain matches the eligibility requirements. There are several eligibility requirements, one of which is that a .name domain must be the real name or identifier of an individual. So, for example, firstname.lastname.name and firstnamelastname.name are both valid. However, lastname.name is not valid because it does not identify an individual. If I registered lastname.name, someone else could mount a challenge based on the eligibility requirements and register otherfirstname.lastname.name. So I do not in fact control the sub domains.

Am I reading that right? Are there similar restrictions on ownership of subdomains in other TLDs?

How do I convince my company to invest in IT - domains, security, etc.?

I work for a small-medium size retailer which has half a dozen high street stores and a website.

The IT situation is currently in a very basic state. As being "Head of IT" is only a small part of my job description and the last on the list I haven't been able to put as much time into it as I would like.

We have around 50 computers and 14 Windows tills on our network (30 inside the head office, 20 external stores, warehousing and laptops). This is all built on a Workgroup network and all sites are connected together over a very basic router level VPN setup with subnets for each store.

Therefore I can not manage anything, check computers are secure, do any auditing, ensure updates are installed, manage Wi-Fi for guest devices or check anything.

I would really like a domain and, but after telling my boss, he says it's not worth it as:

• We have coped for years with a workgroup without an issue
• Employees can be trusted
• If I left or was not available when something broke, then no one would be able to understand how it works
• Setup costs for new hardware and licensing for a domain are very high. (We currently just buy prebuilt OEM Windows PC's and then the odd retail Office licenses)
• As domains are centrally managed, if a major issue occurred it could stop all computers from working. (Unlike a workgroup where if just one computer dies then everything else is fine and doesn't affect anyone else's work.)

I don't know how to stress how serious the security aspects are that we have no domain. Anyone can access content if they connect to our Wi-Fi, anyone can access content from any PC as users do not have passwords installed, shared folders can be seen by anyone and deleted with no logs to show or backup. I am not sure how PCI compliant we are or if we are compliant for auditors. I have been told to ignore this and not to worry.

As "Head of Internal IT Infrastructure" is on my job description, I also don't want to be found accountable if we get a data breach or a legal suit comes against us.

How can I show that things need to change and my time and extra money needs to be spent on this? For a company of our size, perhaps a full time network administrator would be needed. Or am I overthinking things and being very selfish for what I would really want and a workgroup will be just fine?

Update: It sounds like I perhaps keep the idea of a domain on back burners and just try some smaller things. For example, ensure updates, virus scans and firewalls are on, ensure passwords are enabled on individuals PCs, enable backups on every machine, physical locks on rooms with servers in. I am not sure what to do about network-wide file sharing and Wi-Fi, but that's another question!

Why doesn't Kosovo have its own ccTLD yet?

Why is it that Kosovo still hasn't got its own ccTLD?

Kosovo is (semi)-independent, from Serbia (former Yugoslavia), since 2008. Montenegro is independent since 2006. Montenegro has the .me domain since its year of independence.

Even Palestine (which isn't fully recognized) has its own ccTLD.

How should I setup separate MX records for a subdomain?

Let's say I have a domain that I run a web application on, for example cranketywidgets.com, and I'm using Google Apps for handling email for people working on that domain, for example, support@ cranketywidgets.com, jane@cranketywidgets.com, joe@cranketywidgets.com and so on.

Google's own mail services aren't always the best for sending automated reminder emails, comment notifications and so on, so the current solution I plan to pursue is to create a separate subdomain called mailer.cranketywidgets.com, run a mail server off it, and create a few accounts specifically for sending these kinds of emails.

What should the MX records and A records look like here for this?

I'm somewhat confused by the fact that MX records can be names, but that they must eventually resolve to an A record. What should the records look like here?

cranketywidgets.com - A record to actual server like 10.24.233.214

cranketywidgets.com - MX records for Google's email applications

mailer.cranketywidgets.com - MX name pointing to server's IP address

I would greatly appeciate some help on this - the answer seems like it'll be obvious, but email spam is a difficult problem to solve.