8

I've seen organisation unrelated to Oracle that point (via a CNAME record) one of their hostnames to a subdomain of oracle.com, which presumably resolves to a server on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. For instance,

gucs9j.universityofcalifornia.edu

has a CNAME record that points to

bigip-gucs9j-universityofcalifornia.oracle.com

However, even after scanning the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure documentation, I'm still unaware of a way to claim such a subdomain.

Is it possible? Did it use to be possible but no longer is? If it is possible, what Oracle Cloud Infrastructure service allows one to claim one? Or is this not related to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure at all?

jub0bs
  • 60,866
  • 25
  • 183
  • 186
  • I'm not sure if it will help you, but some provider (most provider I know and where i rented a server on my own) set up a subdomain in their own space for every rented (v)server (in most cases it is `hostname.domain.tld`). Maybe oracle does the same? But I'm not sure why they do it... – D. Weber Sep 12 '19 at 05:55

2 Answers2

3

You cannot 'claim' or create a new DNS record under oracle.com, its a private space. Also, what is maybe adding to the confusion is that an instance created in OCI generally gets a FQDN of instancename.subnetname.vcnname.oraclevcn.com - however, this is an internal only address and resolves only within the VCN is was created in. To have this resolve (and be accessible) externally, it needs a public IP, and you would need to create an appropriate DNS record using your own registered domain name and point it to the public IP address.

Tony Melia
  • 46
  • 2
  • The fact remains that many organisations unrelated to Oracle have hosts pointing to `oracle.com` subdomains. For instance, `gucs9j.universityofcalifornia.edu` has a CNAME record that targets `bigip-gucs9j-universityofcalifornia.oracle.com`. How did they manage to claim that subdomain of `oracle.com`? – jub0bs Sep 05 '19 at 06:45
  • @jub0bs First thank you for the points, I tried it, but it appears that Tony is right. I have checked your example and it appears to be under oracle corp. (https://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-129-144-0-0-1/pft?s=129.155.180.42). The `bigip-` prefix suggest that it could be a load balancer on the oracle's side (e.g. https://oracle.github.io/learning-library/oci-library/L100-LAB/Load_Balancer/load_balancer.html) . Perhaps Tony can shed some light on it. Now what about my answer? Why does the documentation state **oracle.com**? – tukan Sep 05 '19 at 07:54
  • 1
    @tukan The oracle.com in the documentation example is just an example of any domain name, it wasn't meant to be taken literally as oracle.com - it could just have easily been written as mycompany.com or mydomain.com – Tony Melia Sep 05 '19 at 13:41
  • I see, well it would be better to write as that could not be interpreted like I did it. – tukan Sep 05 '19 at 14:20
  • @TonyMelia Do you have more insight into how orgs like University of California got hold of their oracle.com subdomain in the first place? – jub0bs Sep 09 '19 at 11:59
1

My username on most platforms is targumon.

I have a project on GitHub which is published through GitHub Pages. It's available here: targumon.github.io/playground/

Obviously I do not own github.com or github.io and this is just a service they provide. I don't truly own that subdomain. Technically they can reclaim it at any moment.

Oracle is a huge company. They're known for their database software but they provide other services as well. I think it's safe to assume the University of California at some point was -or still is- a partner of Oracle, or a customer, or in any similar relationship.

(btw, Oracle headquarters are in California...)

targumon
  • 1,041
  • 12
  • 26