[HWR_14]

Before ICANN started auctioning off TLDs it was common practice to use .dev and .test (probably others that escape me).

It wasn't formalized, but that doesn't really matter. It was well known and commonly done.

In fact, it couldn't have been formalized, because the TLDs were limited and by definition any non standard TLD was for internal use only. It would make no sense to have a defined standard for an impossible situation.

[detaro]

> In fact, it couldn't have been formalized, because the TLDs were limited and by definition any non standard TLD was for internal use only.

No, there never was any guarantee that the existing TLDs were all that would exist ever, so non-standard TLDs were just that: non-standard, undefined what happens to them. And you even provided a counter-example: .test is explicitly reserved by an internet standard to never be in public DNS and thus safe to use for testing purposes.

[chrismorgan]

Using .dev was always contrary to spec. Dunno how common it actually was—I personally never encountered it. Clearly ICANN decided it wasn’t such a hazard as .home and .corp, which are both indefinitely delayed (https://icannwiki.org/Name_Collision) due to their popularity (despite being contrary to spec). You should instead have used something like .localhost (reserved in RFC 2606) if it’s on your local machine, or .test (reserved in RFC 2606) in a local network, or some domain that you control (even if it’s not publicly routable).