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I am running a Fedora server on LAN. Each time it turns on, the screen tells me that I can connect to it via IP or my-fedora-server.shared . I know .local is a pseudo-TLD, but I could not find any information about .shared. Each time I google, it just shows results about shared domains, which are completely irrelevant. What is .shared then?

Meanwhile, my terminal client seems to know that my-fedora-server.shared is on LAN. I am not sure if it works just like .local.

jackxujh
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    It's worth noting that `local` is special as it is often handled by mDNS, not DNS. In practice, you can use whatever non-existent TLD in your networks you want (including `shared`), however you should be careful since new TLDs come into existence all the time and can cause issues (see `dev` and HSTS preloading). – Torin Dec 06 '18 at 11:16

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The DNS Service Discovery components of Zero Configuration Networking and for instance multicast DNS allow hosts to announce a name in your LAN by which other hosts can then address them.

There is, as far as I know, no requirement to be (the subdomain of) a "real" domain as the name to announce, but generally it is a good precaution to select a name that won't likely conflict with hostnames that are already in use.

"printer" would be bad default device name and "HP-1X2Y3Z.printer" is better,
"server" is bad, and "my-fedora-server.shared" most like won't already be in use.

HBruijn
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  • All mDNS implementations I have come across have been using `.local`. – kasperd Dec 06 '18 at 20:57
  • As far as I know .local is the safe and obvious choice as that is reserved for mDNS in [RFC 6762](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6762) but nothing prohibits you using (for better or worse) .shared or any other made-up or none existing TLD – HBruijn Dec 06 '18 at 21:24
  • So "my-fedora-server.shared" is just a self-announced hostname that the Fedora server announces to LAN. This seems like a really cool and elegant method for configuring the network. I should look more into Multicast DNS. – jackxujh Dec 07 '18 at 18:25
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If you look at

https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2606 https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6761

.shared has no special meaning, this means that this TLD can be assigned at any time.

Community
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Alessandro Carini
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