Re:The History of the URL: Path, Fragment, Query, and Auth
by jameshart on Tuesday July 19, 2016 @01:18PM
(#12123110)
That 'relative domain' problem is not specific to one-word domain names. In fact, ALL domains that don't end in '.' are considered 'relative' domains. There's a difference between http://somehost/ and http://somehost./ - the first says 'look for somehost in any of the available default domains', while the second says 'look for a top level domain name called localhost'. Likewise http://news.ycombinator.com/ and http://news.ycombinator.com./ are handled differently - the first is actually also considered as a relative URL, and tried against all your local DNS suffixes before being tried against the root.
Re:The History of the URL: Path, Fragment, Query, and Auth
by strunz on Monday July 18, 2016 @11:54PM
(#12119482)
"Single name domains" as you refer to them usually only work because your DNS search domains are filling the rest in for you. This is why people who work for somecompany.com can simply go to http://intranet , because their DHCP server has somecompany.com in the DNS search domains and the browser/OS will be resolving it to http://intranet.somecompany.com under the hood.
That's because they... actually are domains too. Top Level Domains, as the acronym says.
It wouldn't make sense for TLDs like com, net, org, etc.
Actually it might --- that's a great place to put all the information about (and maybe instructions on how to register) a subdomain there.
But, to use the precise terminology, a domain name with a single 'label' has historically been treated as a "relative" domain, e.g. https://localhost , and no doubt many of you will be familiar with intranet sites that use similar "non-qualified" single-label names.