ICANN Finally Approves ".internal" as a Reserved Private Domain/Address After Years of Discussion
Brook.X
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has officially approved the ".internal" domain, which, despite its approval, cannot be registered for public use as it is designated for internal network usage only. In fact, anyone can use it without the need for registration.
Such domains are known as reserved domains, similar in status to reserved IP addresses like 192.168.x.x. These domains and addresses cannot be directly accessed on the public internet, and the DNS system is prohibited from routing these types of domains.
The term "internal" implies for internal use, and some developers and businesses use this suffix when setting up intranet environments. For example, an internal Office Automation (OA) system could be simply addressed as OA.internal, making it very easy to remember.
The long-standing debate centered on whether to reserve the ".internal" domain, given the existence of suffixes like ".local." ICANN believed it necessary to establish a standard to reserve certain domain names for intranet use only, preventing their access from the public internet.
In January of this year, ICANN published its final draft for consultation, which received support. ICANN has now officially approved the ".internal" domain and its status as a reserved domain, prohibiting its registration and use on the public internet.
With these regulations in place, internal DNS hosting systems and Certificate Authorities (CAs) can now resolve domain names within intranets and generate SSL certificates for them. However, public CAs like Let's Encrypt will not issue certificates for these reserved domains, necessitating the use of self-signed certificates by businesses.
It's important to note that ICANN actually discourages the use of such internal reserved domains. However, with cloud computing platforms like Google Cloud already using reserved domains on a small scale and industry-wide agreement on the matter, ICANN had no choice but to approve their use.
