On 27 Oct 2023 00:46 -0400, from monn...@iro.umontreal.ca (Stefan Monnier): >> I would have thought that techies understand its origins, and >> non-techies are fairly unlikely ever to encounter it. > > That's the thing: if you use `home.arpa` for your home network, suddenly > it's exposed to non-techies, like your friends and family, contrary to > things like `in-addr.arpa`.
If the IETF Home Networking WG's choice of domain name bothers $you (for some value of $you), nothing prevents $you from registering a custom domain name for private internal use and using that instead. (Registering the domain name naturally ensures that there will be no naming conflicts at least for the duration of the domain registration period.) Technically, it is of course also entirely possible to just make something up. But making something up comes with clear risks of its own; both risks of technical and connectivity issues, as well as risks of confusion. It might be obvious to $you that $you's internal hosts are *.example.net, but that's _not_ going to be obvious to others. Using the reserved-for-purpose domain name for its intended purpose avoids that in situations where one doesn't see the value of actually paying for a globally unique domain name registration for the purpose. -- Michael Kjörling 🔗 https://michael.kjorling.se “Remember when, on the Internet, nobody cared that you were a dog?”