ICANN reserves .internal for private use at the DNS level

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has approved the reservation of the .internal top-level domain (TLD) for private use, similar to how certain IPv4 address blocks are reserved for internal networks. This decision aims to provide organizations with a dedicated domain for internal use that cannot be accessed on the public internet, thereby preventing conflicts and confusion that may arise from ad hoc TLD creation. The .internal domain will not be delegated in the global domain name system, ensuring it remains exclusive for private networks. Google has been using .internal for its cloud services to avoid external dependencies and potential TLD collisions, and many of its customers have adopted it for enterprise applications. While ICANN acknowledges that the introduction of .internal may not significantly improve the current situation, it assures that it will not worsen existing security or stability issues. This move offers network administrators a sanctioned alternative to creating their own TLDs or using subdomains of existing TLDs for internal DNS management.

- ICANN has reserved the .internal TLD for private network use.

- The .internal domain will not be accessible on the public internet.

- Google has utilized .internal for years to prevent TLD collisions.

- The decision aims to reduce confusion from ad hoc TLD creation.

- ICANN believes the new TLD will not introduce new security issues.