What does it mean when a DNS name starts with xn--?

I found the following domain in my logs:

http://xn--q1a.xn--b1aube0e.xn--c1acygb.xn--p1ai/

I have never seen anything like it. Is this a valid domain? If so what is the TLD?

Ben

Posted 2015-01-03T18:48:14.487

Reputation: 3 798

Why didn't you just try it in a web-browser? Anyway it's a safe way to represent domains with unicode characters. This one translates to http://%D1%81.%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B2%D1%8B%D0%BC.%D0%B3%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%BE%D0%BC.%D1%80%D1%84/

– Nifle – 2015-01-03T19:00:02.217

I did try it in a web browser. I have never seen such a TLD, hence the question. – Ben – 2015-01-03T19:13:34.100

This is a special string encoding called Punycode.

– Daniel B – 2015-01-03T19:22:30.407

Answers

Apparently it's an ascii representation of: .рф

"The domain name рф (romanized as rf [3]) is the Cyrillic country code top-level domain for the Russian Federation, in the Domain Name System of the Internet. In the Domain Name System it has the ASCII DNS name xn--p1ai. The domain accepts only Cyrillic subdomain applications, and is the first Cyrillic implementation of the Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA) system."

Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.%D1%80%D1%84

Bradley Forney

Posted 2015-01-03T18:48:14.487

Reputation: 651