WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.760 So everybody knows that internet addresses all have dots in them, except for the ones that don't. 00:00:05.760 --> 00:00:11.360 Wait, what? Fun fact, it's actually entirely possible for a website to exist with zero dots 00:00:11.360 --> 00:00:18.080 in its address. Like these websites, try typing in pn slash or ai slash into your web browser. 00:00:18.080 --> 00:00:20.640 If it doesn't work on your desktop, try doing it on your phone. 00:00:21.520 --> 00:00:28.720 And look at that! A couple of real, actual web pages without a dot in sight. But why? 00:00:28.720 --> 00:00:33.920 You already know that the end of a web address is typically something like dot com or dot net. 00:00:33.920 --> 00:00:40.960 These are called top-level domains or TLDs. No R. They help get you to the website you want, 00:00:40.960 --> 00:00:46.160 but as the name implies, they're still domains, meaning they can, in theory, direct you to a 00:00:46.160 --> 00:00:52.320 specific website on their own if you just typed in something like com or net with nothing else 00:00:52.320 --> 00:00:58.240 attached. The most common TLDs aren't associated with specific web addresses, but there are some 00:00:58.240 --> 00:01:03.440 two-letter TLDs that were originally meant to be used by folks within a specific country, 00:01:03.440 --> 00:01:09.440 so like a .uk TLD if you live in London and need to make a website for your fish and chip shop. 00:01:10.240 --> 00:01:16.320 But these country code TLDs can instead be used for other purposes, including mapping 00:01:16.320 --> 00:01:20.480 two specific websites on their own, like in the examples we gave towards the beginning of this 00:01:20.480 --> 00:01:25.680 video. And for you networking nerds, all you need to make a dotless domain work is to link it to 00:01:25.680 --> 00:01:30.640 something called an address record or an A record that will use the DNS to point the 00:01:30.640 --> 00:01:36.400 dotless domain to an actual IP address and return you a nice shiny web page. 00:01:36.400 --> 00:01:40.560 Why the heck isn't this more common? I mean, wouldn't it be easy to simply type in a word 00:01:40.560 --> 00:01:44.560 or a brand name and immediately get their website instead of dealing with all those 00:01:44.560 --> 00:01:48.160 messy dot orcs and what nots? I don't even, I don't like those. 00:01:48.160 --> 00:01:53.920 All the way back in 2013, ICANN, who you can think of as our internet overlords, 00:01:53.920 --> 00:02:00.560 decided to officially ban dotless generic TLDs. These are TLDs not nominally tied to a specific 00:02:00.560 --> 00:02:06.400 country like the classic .com and .net, or more recent ones like .work or .crypto. 00:02:06.400 --> 00:02:13.520 But they weren't banned because ICANN hates fun or convenience. They had several good reasons. 00:02:13.520 --> 00:02:18.800 The first is that dotless domains actually are already in use, but they tend to be used on 00:02:18.800 --> 00:02:23.360 large internal networks that you might see inside something like a large corporation. 00:02:23.360 --> 00:02:27.920 There's actually a long history of users in these situations expecting a local site, 00:02:27.920 --> 00:02:33.680 not an internet site, to show up. Extending this functionality to the public internet could cause 00:02:33.680 --> 00:02:39.840 a namespace collision. For example, if you expected Netgear to lead to both a private page 00:02:39.840 --> 00:02:44.000 for managing your local network's equipment and Netgear's official website because you 00:02:44.000 --> 00:02:48.640 feel like buying a new router today, your poor computer might not know how to handle that. 00:02:48.640 --> 00:02:51.840 It's a similar issue to why the examples we gave at the beginning of the video 00:02:51.840 --> 00:02:57.520 might work on your phone, but not your PC. And this fact actually highlights an even bigger problem. 00:02:57.520 --> 00:03:02.400 Security. Because people have an expectation of trust when it comes to their local networks, 00:03:02.400 --> 00:03:08.240 it would be very easy to accidentally send sensitive data to a completely different public site 00:03:08.240 --> 00:03:12.960 that has the same dotless domain name. Even aside from that specific risk, many systems are 00:03:12.960 --> 00:03:18.160 configured in different ways to treat local addresses with more lack security. And if your PC 00:03:18.160 --> 00:03:22.720 thinks it's talking to a dotless domain on your local private network, but is actually connected 00:03:22.720 --> 00:03:28.880 to a public domain with the same name, that opens the door to myriad potential security holes. 00:03:28.880 --> 00:03:33.280 And comedic situations. Finally, we'd be remiss if we didn't mention that 00:03:33.280 --> 00:03:41.280 dotless domains would largely break emails. You see, email commonly is sent over a protocol 00:03:41.280 --> 00:03:48.080 called SMTP. And SMTP simply isn't built for dotless domains. It can't even understand them. 00:03:48.080 --> 00:03:53.600 So if you try to send a message to an address that looks like this, you'll just get a big fat 00:03:53.600 --> 00:03:58.880 return to sender in reply. So it's really not surprising that when Google tried to make another 00:03:58.880 --> 00:04:04.880 push to normalize dotless domains a few years ago, I can told them to go pound sand. Google wanted 00:04:04.880 --> 00:04:11.120 to do this so they could register TLDs like app and search. So whenever users typed in these words, 00:04:11.120 --> 00:04:16.160 they'd get directed to a Google-owned website. Kind of reminds me of that time, Subway tried to 00:04:16.160 --> 00:04:23.040 trademark the word footlong. You don't own sandwiches, Subway. Hey, thanks for watching this video, 00:04:23.040 --> 00:04:26.480 guys. Like the video if you liked it. Dislike it if you disliked it. Check out our other videos. 00:04:26.480 --> 00:04:29.760 Comment below with videos or gestures that don't forget to subscribe and follow for more videos 00:04:29.760 --> 00:04:34.400 like this one from TechWiki. And there are some other channels out there too. 00:04:34.400 --> 00:04:36.880 TechWiki.