Trivia question: which ccTLD resolves without a subdomain?

[BenFenner]

Many years ago I was researching top-level domains (mostly via Wikipedia) and stumbled across a country code TLD (ccTLD) that is notable for being DNS-resolvable (I think that is the correct phrase) without any subdomain. What I mean is, you can point your browser at http://<ccTLD> or maybe https://<ccTLD> and it will resolve to a web page.

I would love to rediscover which one it is. On a whim I gave Google's LLM Claude 2.5 Flash a try and it failed to produce the answer after giving it 10 tries which is when it gave up.

To me this is a useful bit of trivia that can be used to figure out if your ISP (or alternative DNS resolver) is configured properly. For example, the Verizon [cell] Wireless ISP does resolve this URL properly but the Spectrum ISP does not.

Does anyone know which ccTLD I'm talking about? Or can anyone figure it out?

[Lucio Chiappetti]

Not sure what you mean ... that an nslookup for <ccTLD> should resolve to an IP address, or that a query=SOA shall return a host in <ccTLD> ?
Do you know the answer and want us guessing it ?
I tried a few known countries including some very small ones close to me (like .va and .sm) but I see usually the SOA is host.nic.<ccTLD> or anyhow in some 2nd level subdomain. I looked up very quickly the wiki page and tried a few ... a typo (I wanted to type .ae and type .au) shows that the SOA for Australia is q.au.
But that does not imply the <ccTLD> will reply as an http server.

[RealityRipple]

um...

localhost

[therube]

I think he's saying, you type in something like:

http://com/
http://private/
http://lan/

(or https:// equivalent) & it loads a web page.

Setting, browser.fixup.alternate.enabled;false, will probably help during testing.


If my interpretation is correct, http://localhost/ isn't working on my end.


BTW, how to disable urlbar search itself?

[RealityRipple]

I think he's saying, you type in something like:

http://com/
http://private/
http://lan/

(or https:// equivalent) & it loads a web page.

Setting, browser.fixup.alternate.enabled;false, will probably help during testing.


If my interpretation is correct, http://localhost/ isn't working on my end.


BTW, how to disable urlbar search itself?

Localhost is your own computer. Ping it. It'd only load a page if you were running a webserver.

[BenFenner]

I think he's saying, you type in something like:

http://com

(or https:// equivalent) & it loads a web page.

Correct. (Trailing forward slash removed.)

Do you know the answer and want us guessing it ?

At one time I knew the answer, but I've since forgotten.

[BenFenner]

BTW, how to disable urlbar search itself?

To completely remove any help from the location bar, you'll want to copy these about:config settings:

Code: Select all

services.sync.prefs.sync.browser.urlbar.maxRichResults;false
services.sync.prefs.sync.browser.urlbar.autocomplete.enabled;false
browser.urlbar.trimURLs;false
browser.urlbar.suggest.openpage;false
browser.urlbar.suggest.history.onlyTyped;false
browser.urlbar.suggest.history;false
browser.urlbar.suggest.bookmark;false
browser.urlbar.formatting.enabled;false
browser.urlbar.autocomplete.enabled;false
browser.urlbar.autoFill.typed;false
browser.urlbar.autoFill;false

keyword.enabled;false

browser.fixup.alternate.suffix;
browser.fixup.alternate.prefix;
browser.fixup.alternate.enabled;false

But to accomplish what I think you want to accomplish, go look at the options found in Tools → Preferences → Privacy → General → Location Bar.

Previously discussed in these 3 places:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=28664&p=230820#p230820
viewtopic.php?f=46&t=26703&p=214730#p214730
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=17952&p=131840#p131840

[Lucio Chiappetti]

localhost works if you have a suitably configured http server on your machine ... I have one which is not accessible from the outside world and I use it as local file navigator or for prototyping. After all, there is no place like 127.0.0.1 (they sell even tee shirts with that)
Curious that some of the example given (which are not country-code top level domains) are domain-for-sale or redirect (like LAN Chile) ... and seem not to have a SOA.

[BenFenner]

Off-topic:
The localhost joke is completely off topic for this discussion since it is not a ccTLD.

[BenFenner]

You could run a script to do hostname lookup on all of the root ccTLD domains.

I'd have to run the script from a known-good DNS setup and that is very difficult for me right now since I don't know of any except Verizon Wireless and I'm not going to run a script on my voice-calls-only cell phone. =/

From a quick random sample, it looks like "ws" is one that has an associated IP address.

Interesting you say "ws" might be a ccTLD with a web page hosted at that URL. That is not the ccTLD I remember, and the Wikipedia article doesn't say anything about it. The one I recall had an article that specifically mentioned how odd it was that the ccTLD resolved to an IP and had a web page hosted there.

Anyway, if "ws" has the same thing, that's just as good I guess. But I can't confirm myself. Does this bring people to a web page (ignoring forced location bar searches)?
http://ws

[adoxa]

Nope, bad gateway.

[BenFenner]

Yah, I guess DNS-resolvable is not exactly what I'm looking for. I'm looking for the ccTLD that has a web page hosted at the resolved IP. IIRC it was a small island nation with maybe "P" in the ccTLD... But I can't be sure.

[adoxa]

I did the expanded version of curl -I http://p[a-z] http://[a-z]p and none worked.

[Michaell]

http://ac works but redirects to www.ac.com
It's for Ascension Island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascension_Island

[BenFenner]

http://ac works but redirects to www.ac.com
It's for Ascension Island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascension_Island

That is probably the one!

The other thing I thought I remembered was maybe it was "al" or similar and "ac" seems about right. The Wikipedia page doesn't say anything about the naked domain resolving to a web page, but that might have been a different Wikipedia page I was reading...

So if you visit http://ac then you get redirected to http://www.ac.com?
Because my ISP (DNS?) does not get me there (actually neither link works for me).
I've even reported it to them in the past and they did find it interesting (but apparently never fixed it).

[Michaell]

So if you visit http://ac then you get redirected to http://www.ac.com?

yes, blank page probably because I block everything

[adoxa]

I did curl -I http://?? on the 243 domains I have (from a list I got somewhere) and none worked (including ac; www[.]ac[.]com did work, but it's just a parking site).

[BenFenner]

Hmm, thank you for trying. Maybe things have changed in the 3-4 years since I last went down this road. =/

[Moonchild]

Keep in mind that Pale Moon does try to fix up URLs by default if users don't include a suffix or prefix and will attempt .com and www., so if you're trying there, then it may not necessarily be the ccTLD resolving or redirecting to the .com website, but the browser fixup doing that instead.