For fiction purposes, are there any reserved or non-existent top-level-domains writers can use in stories?

Question

I understand that it's long been a tradition in American fictional works, especially movies and TV, to use a '555' phone code for any numbers that needed to be displayed on-screen, as that prefix doesn't exist, and so there was no risk of the writers unwittingly using a real number.

As a writer of stories, my question is: Are there any similar non-existent or otherwise reserved top-level domains that I could use in a fictional context to avoid inadvertently publishing an in-use—or a 'likely-to-come-into-use'—domain?

I'm aware that TLDs are being created a lot more quickly than they were, but I didn't know if there were any specifically set aside.

As additional info, my current project is an alternate history story set in a modern-day Roman state, so I'd ideally be looking for a TLD I could crowbar into representing that in some way. I did consider .spqr as a sort of equivalent to .gov, though that's maybe a little heavy-handed setting-wise (but of course that's for me to figure out...).

I've also checked this list at ICANN, and I can't see, for example, .spqr or .rom. I'd be cautious about using them if they're potentially available for future registration.

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EDIT 23/Jan/17: Wow. I'd like to thank everyone who's taken the time to reply to this. I really do appreciate it, and there have been some great suggestions. I think, on balance, probably the easiest way to go is, as some have said, to simply come up with a new format for addresses, on the assumption that in my alternate history many things will be different, some subtly, some less so - so this might as well be one of them.

Even so, there have been some great ideas, and some interesting info provided. I'm still going through some of the comments as I have chance - please forgive me if I don't answer them all!

Again, thanks for taking time to offer these suggestions.

Answer 1

Register a real domain

You could think about registering a real domain (with a name relevant to your novel) and then:

• Adding some real content that either is an optional part of the story or

• Adding content that promotes your work.

The following links provide complete instructions on how to register a domain name.

• How to Register Your Own Domain Name

• How to Register a Domain Name

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Register a new Top Level Domain

Several comments have suggested creating a new TLD (Top Level Domain). This is not recommended because:

• It's nowhere near as easy as registering a second or third level domain and comes with significant extra responsibilities.

  The application for a new gTLD is a much more complex process. An applicant for a new gTLD is, in fact, applying to create and operate a registry business supporting the Internet's domain name system. This involves a number of significant responsibilities, as the operator of a new gTLD is running a piece of visible Internet infrastructure.

• It is very expensive.

  The evaluation fee is USD 185,000. Applicants will be required to pay a USD 5,000 deposit fee per requested application slot when registering. The deposit will be credited against the evaluation fee.

  ...

  Once an application has successfully passed all the evaluation steps, the applicant is required to sign a New gTLD Agreement (also called Registry Agreement) with ICANN. Under the agreement, there are two fees: (a) a fixed fee of USD 6,250 per calendar quarter; (b) and a transaction fee of USD 0.25. The latter does not apply until and unless more than 50,000 transactions have occurred in the TLD during any calendar quarter or any four calendar quarter period. Please refer to section 6.1 of the New gTLD Agreement in the Applicant Guidebook.

Source Frequently Asked Questions

Answer 2

Several people have suggested the possibility of using real-life reserved domain names. (For those curious, I have a summary of names and networks reserved for examples and documentation on my personal web site.)

Some people have even suggested using real-world domain names that are somehow undesirable, but still valid.

Yet others have suggested to register a domain name of your own, such that you are able to control its content.

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that there is a way to make up valid-looking domain names that actually will not exist.

That's because the two-letter top level domains are ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country or territory codes. (ruakh pointed out in a comment that there exist exceptions to this rule. See below.)

Wikipedia has a handy table of assignment status of all such code combinations.

There are four ranges that are "free for assignment at the disposal of users" and thus, barring a major rework of the ISO standard, cannot possibly become valid top-level domains. Those are AA (just that one), QM through QZ, XA through XZ and ZZ (just that one).

The same Wikipedia article also has a short list of examples how some of these are currently being used. There are also a large number of codes reserved but not free for assignment for various reasons and varying lengths of time.

Basically, if you compose a domain name like you normally would on the Internet,

• but give it a top-level domain out of the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 "free for assignment at the disposal of users" range, then you can be all but certain that it will not clash with any real-world Internet domain name now or in the future.
• but use any of the other ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 reserved combinations for a TLD, then you have to check to make sure that you aren't causing a potential name conflict (for example, EU is "exceptionally reserved", and is actually available as a top-level domain), but for the most part you should be okay.

So it's perfectly possible for your character to have an email address like [email protected] and you can be as certain as one can reasonably be that nobody will be registering the domain name momandpopwebmail.qw for use on the actual Internet. (Maybe "QW" means "quickweb" in your world?)

Always ISO 3166-1 alpha-2?

As was pointed out by ruakh, citing .uk as an example, there are a small number of country-code top-level domains that do not match the country's ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code, which in this case is GB.

The criteria for eligibility for a two-letter ccTLD are laid out by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). There are a few other exceptional cases allowed for, but the main exception is for ccTLDs that do not match the country's alpha-2 code, but were originally approved before 2000 under an exceptional delegation in ISO 3166 and still maintain that status:

• Grandfathered prior to 2000. ICANN codified the rules under which future exceptionally reserved delegations may be considered in 2000 in Resolution 00.74. Certain domains were delegated on the basis of being “exceptionally reserved” by the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency prior to this date. These domains were “.UK”, “.AC”, “.GG” and “.JE”. Of these, “.GG” and “.JE” are now listed in the ISO 3166-1 standard and therefore qualify normally. The remaining two domains that are grandfathered under their original eligibility are “.UK” and “.AC”.

It's worth noting in relation to ruakh's example of the United Kingdom that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) lists .gb as "unassigned, reserved" and "originally meant to replace .uk". We also note that Wikipedia's summary table lists both AC and UK as "exceptionally reserved".

Because the rule quoted above is about the eligibility of ccTLDs that were established before the current rules for ccTLD eligibility took effect in year 2000, barring an IANA rule change, no new ccTLDs can be assigned under the grandfathering criteria. While not exactly an ISO standard, these rules do on the Internet have status similar to that of an ISO standard.

Since none of the "free for assignment at the disposal of users" ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes fall under the grandfathering rule, and no other eligibility criteria appear to apply, we can still safely use those ranges confident in our assessment that they will not be assigned as top-level domains.

What about two-ASCII-letter TLDs not covered by ISO 3166-1 alpha-2?

This is covered by Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) Resolution 00.74, which states that (my emphasis):

It is therefore RESOLVED [00.74] that the IANA staff is advised that alpha-2 codes not on the ISO 3166-1 list are delegable as ccTLDs only in cases where the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency, on its exceptional reservation list, has issued a reservation of the code that covers any application of ISO 3166-1 that needs a coded representation in the name of the country, territory, or area involved;

The "advised" is a bit of a red herring here; it means "we are telling you that", not "we are suggesting that". The operative part specifies that "alpha-2 codes not on the ISO 3166-1 list" can be assigned as ccTLDs only in the case that said code has a status of "exceptional reservation". As a consequence, the set of TLDs described by "alpha-2 codes" (two English alphabet characters) is restricted to the meaning that those character combinations have in ISO 3166-1 alpha-2.

But... but... what about in the future?

Sure, things can change. But at this level, things change very slowly. Given how many different entities likely use the "free for assignment at the disposal of users" ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 ranges for their internal use, were the relevant ISO committee to start to assign those codes for other uses, all hell would break loose. If these codes are ever to be assigned to any other use, there would likely be a decades-long transitionary period preceding it. Compare the current transitional reservations which in several cases stretch out to the 2050s, still a good 30-40 years into the future.

Also note that a good half or so of the alpha-2 codes are as of yet unassigned. Should a new country appear tomorrow that is sufficiently recognized to receive its own ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code, it is likely that an appropriate two-letter code could be selected without needing to do anything with the ranges that are specifically available for users' own use.

We also note that the Frequently Asked Questions for the gTLD application process as published by the ICANN specifically states that (my emphasis)

2.12 Can a New gTLD name be 2 letters?

Applied-for gTLD strings in ASCII must be composed of three or more visually distinct characters. Two-character ASCII strings are not permitted, to avoid conflicting with current and future country-codes based on the ISO 3166-1 standard.

On the whole, I wouldn't worry about the risk of collions between future assigned TLDs and the "free for assignment at the disposal of users" ranges in ISO 3166-1 alpha-2. If it ever happens, your story might even become a bit of international relationships history.

TL;DR:

• Use a two-letter top-level domain of AA, QM through QZ, XA through XZ or ZZ.

Answer 3

As mentioned by @journeyman-geek, you might consider giving your world an alternative name resolution system which avoids collision by not following the format of domain names as seen in our own DNS system. This is easy to imagine as the defining features of modern DNS names (and, by extension, URLs) are largely historical accident.

For example, many email addresses in the Ender's Game series look like hgraff%[email protected]. A % sign in the email address was used by various network gateways such as the CSNET relay, something which was common at the time the first Ender books were written but is unheard of today.

One such possible scheme could be to reverse the hierarchical order and use colons instead of periods, yielding a format such as spqr:senate:marcus·tullius·cicero. (Note also the interpunct, an obscure character in the English alphabet but one which I assume was likely included in basic RSCII and allowed in their DNS names.)

Answer 4

Nothing that would really work - as per bob's excellent comment, there's a list of reserved, example TLDs, none of which are suitable and the new gTLDs are pretty broad.

There's nothing stopping a organisation with a justification and enough money from registring any new gTLD.

Its worth considering the rich and varied tradition of making things up when talking about computers in media, from interfaces to websites.

As such the 'clever' way would be to introduce some slight, subtle inconsistancy.

555 was picked so it wouldn't route to any phone number

You could simply pick a branch of the multiverse where things went differently, colons instead of dots, or even having your network as one large set of directories.

So the office of the imperitor general of the imperial sanitation department might be at spqr/sanitation/org/official/imperitor.

This would break in any modern web browser and would be consistant.

Or just gloss it over and tell, don't show.

Answer 5

There is the tTLD (test top-level domain) class of domains, like .test (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.test or RFC 6761 from February 2013, section 6.2), the same in various scripts and common languages for that script (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-level_domain#IDN_test_domains).

RFC 2606 from June 1999, section 2 also mentions .test and additionally:

• .example
• .invalid
• .localhost

with the following explanation:

  ".test" is recommended for use in testing of current or new DNS

  related code.

  ".example" is recommended for use in documentation or as examples.

  ".invalid" is intended for use in online construction of domain

  names that are sure to be invalid and which it is obvious at a
  glance are invalid.

  The ".localhost" TLD has traditionally been statically defined in

  host DNS implementations as having an A record pointing to the
  loop back IP address and is reserved for such use.  Any other use
  would conflict with widely deployed code which assumes this use.

Answer 6

If your world allows, your world's Internet doesn't work the same.

If you create your Internet to use underscores, a certain character, or a character you invented instead of a period, then you can have whatever address (if your new Internet uses addresses) you want.

Or you could do away with top and sub domains all together. For example you could have John Doe's email address be:

John-doe@email

And have the search engine address be:

websearch

This is pretty future proof, because top and sub domains aren't going anywhere.

Those were some ideas, you could get creative with your new Internet.

Answer 7

As part of the general idea of making something that would not be a legal TLD (as o.m. notes), you could have a character not found in ASCII as part of the TLD. The development turned out a little different in your universe.

This could work especially well if the alternate history skipped something that was responsible for one of our modern letters, so of course that would be different.

Using a real (historical) letter has the advantage of being able to type and print it: (Þ, þ) is one of my favorites. Or maybe they kept some that look more like the Greek progenitors (Γ instead of C) or G is still a C with diacritical mark.

I think it would be interesting if one such change were present in names and such; not so much as to baffle the reader, but just one difference to give it a unique character [pun intended].

With internationalized domain names now, mixing scripts from different languages (like using Γ for C but otherwise Latin characters) is unlikely to match any future domain name, which will be in one language or the other but not mix languages in the same word.

If the book is self-published and you’re providing print-ready PDF, you could make your own unique character. But it’s quite hard to invent something suitable as a letter that’s not already real (and hopefully in Unicode).

Much of the URI syntax is “just the way it turned out” and it could easily have been different. I recall reading that Tim Berners-Lee considers the current system inconsistent with the hostname backwards from the path, and use of different separators is unnecessary. So www.example.com/site/page#fragment should really be com.example.www.site.page.fragment. Point is, in an alternate history you will expect the syntax to be different in detail, even if they hit upon the same general idea of a uniform resource locator as a hiarchy that extends a machine’s directory structure.

You might use a different (or different looking) character as the separator, such as a tiny superscript ^ or a vertical bar that spans the whole ascender through decender height of the character cell.

Answer 8

You can use the system most countries that are not the USA use. Combining the TLD for the purpose of the website with the country's TLD

For example the website for the praetorian guard would be: www.praetorian-guard.gov.rom or www.praetorian-guard.gov.spqr while a normal website would be along the lines of www.pizza.com.rom or www.pizza.com.spqr.

That way, even if the TLD .spqr or .rom are registered as a gTLD, the websites would not exist because such format is only used for regular TLDs. And it's not like a new country will just appear and claim .spqr or .rom anytime soon, if ever.

Answer 9

How about something that would not be a valid domain name, but looks roughly like one?

.sen_rome

.r

Reserved ones are things like .test or .invalid, they stand out in a story.

Answer 10

FYI Rome's actual institutional website domains are:

• www.comune.roma.it (literally"common".rome.it)

• www.cittametropolitanaroma.gov.it (lit. "metropolitan city of rome".gov.it)

I live there & I would incredibly love to see the '.spqr' in such a story. Anyways, I don't believe that domain name will ever be added (never say never: angry spanish people got .cat domain).

Anyways consider this: if the Roman Empire survived 2300 years they would have developed other ways to describe domains. But, because you are the author and people (or nerds?) expect a normal-looking domain name you could just flip the entire name like java packages or similar dot-separated syntax.

There would not be an international standard as the emperor ands senators would have it very roman-centric, i think maybe a sort of directory-like nomenclature for websites, where every website would be given an unique domain name by the Pontifex (or his office).

There would be an hyper textum translationis protocollum using that to fetch resources for users.

For example one of the few approved search engines, the Google Indagator, is reachable here: http://spqr.indagator.google. Here is Ceasar's memorial website: http://spqr.historia.caesar.

As romans sought to integrate other people in the empire they would eventually add something like: http://spqr.barbari.carthago.voluptuaria for websites about external countries (this specific one to have a family trip to the ruins of a famous city in Tunisia).

Answer 11

You could use a single-letter second-level domain in .com, .net, or .org, like y.com, or 1.org. There is more info on which TLDs won’t accept these in the Wikipedia article “Single-letter second-level domain”.

Another option would be to make up your own addressing scheme like:

<info-link#info-provider:some-company:blah>

Answer 12

a.com, b.com, c.com, etc.

In 1993, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) explicitly reserved all single-letter and single-digit second-level domain names in the top-level domains com, net, and org

Some were reserved before '93 and do actually have sites (i.net, q.com, q.net, x.com, x.org, z.com, a.co, g.co, t.co, t.me, w.org), but everything else is off limits.

However...

In December 2005, ICANN considered auctioning these domains

So maybe these domains will be available someday. But it's been 11 years, so I wouldn't bite my nails about it.

Source: Single-letter second-level domain

Answer 13

Perhaps something quite different, like sort-of an X.400 address with different labels: nun=incudibus,dpca=acme,dap=com

Answer 14

There are reserved IP addresses

For example, 127.0.0.1 routes back to your own computer, while 192.168.XXX.XXX addresses are reserved for internal use in private networks, as are the 10.XXX.XXX.XXX and 172.16.XXX.XXX blocks. You can safely use them as fictional addresses knowing that no-one on the internet has these addresses.

There are also some IP blocks reserved for documentation, namely 192.0.2.XXX, 198.51.100.XXX and 203.0.133.XXX.

IPv6 has the block 2001.bd8.XXXX.XXXX.XXXX.XXXX.XXXX.XXXX reserved for documentation, while fcXX.XXXX.XXXX.XXXX.XXXX.XXXX.XXXX.XXXX is for use in private networks.

Unfortunately they're not quite as punchy as domain names, although you can actually connect to IP addresses through your browser.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserved_IP_addresses

https://michael.kjorling.se/computers/internet-reservations/examples-and-documentation

Answer 15

I don't believe there are any reserved names for authors. I know that Microsoft reserved some fictitious names themselves so perhaps that is a good example of what others do.

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20061013-05/?p=29393

Answer 16

I stumbled upon this in 2022 and it occured to me that the trends of cctlds have changed a bit since 2017. For example, there is now .scot, .wales, .quebec, and .cat. So for a theoretical a modern day Rome a cctld of .spqr wouldn't be that odd after all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographic_top-level_domain