What about this special domain "to."

Today I saw this special domain and I'm really wondering.

How it's possible. Where can I register this type of domains :)

Thank you.

Chandra Nakka

Posted 2016-05-14T17:33:12.397

Reputation: 191

Was it the single word in the URL or the suffix? http://to/ or http://something.to? – Burgi – 2016-05-14T18:12:16.947

1if you click the "to" link it resolves to "to./" and displays a page under construction, never heard of ./ domain – Moab – 2016-05-14T18:17:26.883

http://to./ is the actual address – Moab – 2016-05-14T18:27:12.587

@Moab I can't even look it up on whois. Very odd. – Burgi – 2016-05-14T18:30:35.843

Only thing I can find is Unix related...http://www.computerhope.com/jargon/d/dotslash.htm

– Moab – 2016-05-14T18:40:26.983

Instead of guessing on whether people are guessing right or wrong, lets at least wait for OP to give some input if they really want an answer. – Julie Pelletier – 2016-05-14T18:58:33.570

1I just checked and to alone points to the .to TLD which apparently has a webserver with no content at its base. I verified and all TLDs are accessible this way, although they don't necessarily have a website there. – Julie Pelletier – 2016-05-15T01:58:07.847

Why do you offer a bounty without answering the comments and trying to help others to answer?? It's just waste of reputation! – Máté Juhász – 2016-05-17T12:37:40.437

Answers

In theory, any fully qualified domain name is supposed to end with a . - this is in the original RFC but ignored for practical reasons. You could also set a server to point at a TLD, but this isn't typically done.

So to do this, you'd need to own your own TLD - Its plausible but unlikely - icann lets organisations run such TLDs but you'd need to prove that you are capable of running a registar, and some other requirements. "I want a cool 2 letter tld" is not a good reason . Alternately you'd need a ccTLD, and control the root of that, either by being the official registar, or perhaps by overthrowing the current government without causing international incidents.

So, a two letter domain at a dot at the end is plausible but its unlikely an individual can have it.

However feel free to end your own domain with a dot, and amuse and astound your friends.

Journeyman Geek

Posted 2016-05-14T17:33:12.397

Reputation: 119 122

To be precise, a fully qualified domain name ends with a .. This removes any ambiguity that could result from implicitly appended suffixes. – Daniel B – 2016-05-17T13:23:07.780

Adding a . between org and /rfc in that original RFC link works just fine. Unfortunately, the same does not seem to be true for superuser.com./, though it does seem to reach the correct server, the favicon shows up.

– 8bittree – 2016-05-17T14:38:38.570

1Might be due to loadbalancers and stuff. I tried it with my (simpler) web hosting setup and it works – Journeyman Geek – 2016-05-17T14:41:01.713

I expect that while "superuser.com" and "superuser.com." are the same from a hostname lookup point of view they are distinct from a name-based virtual hosting point of view. – plugwash – 2016-05-17T14:42:52.677

I use vhosts (on lighttpd) and it works fine. I'd blame the load balancer or IIS. – Journeyman Geek – 2016-05-17T14:52:26.707

The registrar for .to is https://www.tonic.to/ "

Tonic Corporation offers automated registration of domain names in the .TO top level domain. Our automated .TO registry has been in operation since June 1997. .TO names work worldwide exactly the same as do .COM names.

– DavidPostill – 2016-05-20T12:39:59.067

The .to registrar has nothing to do with this URL. – harrymc – 2016-05-21T14:18:41.230

Some detective work about http://to./ (or http://to) :

The Online Url-IP Converter converts it to the IP address of 216.74.32.107, and so does ping to. on my computer. For verification, entering http://216.74.32.107/ in the browser shows the same website.
The IP address 216.74.32.107 is mapped by MYIP.MS to the USA company Wcp/32Points Intermediate Holding Company, INC, with this information :

This company hosts 584 sites (via DNS), divided among 21 top-level domains. Their list is given in the above MYIP.MS link. This means that each of the 21 domains of format like abc.com has about 28 sub-domains like xxx.abc.com, meaning 21 quite complex websites.
ARIN Whois says this company owns the IP range of 216.74.0.0 - 216.74.63.255, which is a modest chunk of 16320 addresses.
The company website is given as www.breedworks.biz but there is nothing at this address (domain for sale).

Conclusion : This is a small hosting company which probably manages its own DNS records.

My very private opinion :

This is not a domain, but a glitch in the DNS records of a hosting company. In other words - a bug that has gone unobserved, until the poster happened (probably) to mistype an HTTP address.

This DNS seems to point to an empty website using IIS, probably never used and so this DNS error was never discovered.

I have not found any way of informing this company of their DNS error, except perhaps by letter or phone call (which I have no intention of doing).

harrymc

Posted 2016-05-14T17:33:12.397

Reputation: 306 093

Are you saying someone gave a domain name somecharacter.to to this hosting company and either due to some bug or mistake somecharacter is missing and they are just serving to./ only ? – pun – 2016-05-19T05:11:59.707

@The_IT_Guy_You_Don't_Like: Yes, I suspect something like that. BTW the dot at the end is not required : to/ works just as well as to./. – harrymc – 2016-05-19T06:40:51.023

To is the country code for Tonga. The United States has a country code of us, so you may see domain names in the form example.us. The country code for Germany is de, the one for Mexico is mx, and the one for France is fr. For others, see Officially assigned code elements.

Some country codes are used for web sites outside the country with which the domain name is associated. E.g. .ws, which is an abbreviation for "Western Samoa" and is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Samoa, is attractive to some website owners because it can also be thought of as an abbreviation for "web site".

moonpoint

Posted 2016-05-14T17:33:12.397

Reputation: 4 432

7The domain they ask about is ./, not .to – Moab – 2016-05-14T18:11:56.623

1I would have upvoted this answer but the last sentence is 100% opinion. – Ramhound – 2016-05-17T12:41:59.193

This is not a country-code. – harrymc – 2016-05-21T14:19:47.103

@Ramhound, perhaps, but, the statement is based on how I've seen it marketed. E.g., see The .WS Story: "We thought that the abbreviation .WS could be successfully marketed worldwide as the 'WebSite' top-level domain..." and the Wikipedia article to which I linked, which includes "The .ws country code has been marketed as a domain hack, with the .ws purportedly standing for "World Site" or "Web Site..."

– moonpoint – 2016-06-03T11:17:47.003

@Moab, to is the same as to., just as abc.com is the same as abc.com. - see Trailing Dots in Domain Names: "... fully-qualified (unambiguous) DNS domain names have a dot at the end. People running DNS servers usually know this (if you miss the trailing dots out, your DNS configuration is unlikely to work) but the general public usually doesn't. A domain name that doesn't have a dot at the end is not fully-qualified and is potentially ambiguous. This was documented in the DNS specification, RFC 1034, way back in 1987"

– moonpoint – 2016-06-03T11:30:59.510

@harrymc, "to" is the country code for Tonga. The period at the end doesn't change it. Though you are likely accustomed to not seeing a period at the end of a FQDN name, since browsers don't require it, the proper form according to the RFC, includes it. From RFC 1034: "When a user needs to type a domain name, the length of each label is omitted and the labels are separated by dots ("."). Since a complete domain name ends with the root label, this leads to a printed form which ends in a dot."

– moonpoint – 2016-06-03T11:38:19.940

@moonpoint: "to" is the country code for Tonga but it has nothing to do with the question. http://to evaluates to 216.74.32.107, which is certainly not the address of the entire state of Tonga. – harrymc – 2016-06-03T12:33:55.860

@moonpoint So you don't disagree the last statement is opinion based – Ramhound – 2016-06-03T12:36:03.920

I think to./ is really just a webserver installed on the host system which is providing the .to tld's can be proved by going to http://to

The / at the end is just the subfolder navigation delimeter and the . second last stands for the root level domain construct which is the tld of all tld's which all browsers don't need to be entered but actually exists.

In case it is not clear what i mean here is an example:

a normal url as it is used/entered by people

www.goolge.com

what the url actually is

www.google.com.

or with other words you can add a ./ at the end of every fqdn and it should work like bevor

prove it by opening http://www.google.com./

konqui

Posted 2016-05-14T17:33:12.397

Reputation: 504

There are probably vendors that resell it but you can register it at https://register.to/

Update:

After seeing many comments, I furthered my verification and found that all TLDs can have a DNS entry pointing to back to themselves, which explains that http://to is a valid URL.

If getting such a short URL is really what you're looking for, you would need to setup a TLD and this is well addressed in this question.

Julie Pelletier

Posted 2016-05-14T17:33:12.397

Reputation: 2 065

moonpoint does give valid points about domain TLD for country codes, but they individually decide their restrictions. In smaller or less evolved countries, the regulations are much looser and they often accept everything in the hope of making profit out of them, unlike countries like the US and Canada which impose that the domain refers to a local entity. – Julie Pelletier – 2016-05-14T18:10:38.657

The OP is not clear on if this is the TLD .to or a local address http://to/. Currently the answers here are just guessing. – Burgi – 2016-05-14T18:28:33.163

1@Moab According to my console that page is being returned from 216.74.32.107. Doesn't look internal at all. – Michael Frank – 2016-05-15T12:03:23.303

@Moab: Just do a dig on any TLD and you'll see it's normally configured. – Julie Pelletier – 2016-05-15T15:42:55.287

@Moab: No. to is. http://to is a valid URL. – Julie Pelletier – 2016-05-15T16:36:20.573

I don't know if you will be allowed to buy the top domain "to" which is accessible as host name to a web page more or less by chance, by ending it with a dot. I don't think it's a good idea either because such an address will make unpredictable results depending on what software you're using. This is because top domains are not defined as dns lookup for services, thus it's all in the implementation of a certain program how it will be interpreted. If you want contact with people behind the /to dot/ joke you will find information here: http://ipduh.com/dns/?to.

Frank Sixteen

Posted 2016-05-14T17:33:12.397

Reputation: 620