They could be gTLDs in the far future, but ICANN is likely to hold off for a good long while. Better to use something that is actually reserved, though. You never know.
.local is in this weird state where it's _technically_ not reserved, but most PCs in the world already resolve it with special non-DNS software because of the Bonjour/mDNS protocol.
So you end up with the IETF standardising .local, because Apple was already using it, but ICANN never did much with that standardisation.
I doubt ICANN will actually touch .local, but they could. One could imagine a scheme where .local is globally registered to prevent Windows clients (who don't always support mDNS) from resolving .local domains wrong.
This document describes the process for requesting gTLDs. Some internal ICANN project could ignore the contents of the guidebook without breaking "the rules". Or they could invent some kind of new TLD system; branded gTLDs didn't exist twenty years ago and I doubt most people would've assumed them to become real, yet blog.google is a real thing that exists.
> This document specifies that the DNS top-level domain ".local." is a special domain with special semantics, namely that any fully qualified name ending in ".local.
But that's an IETF standard, not an ICANN policy. AFAIK there's nothing in place today that would _prevent_ ICANN from granting .local to a registry other than it just being a bad idea.
And ICANN is bound by the IETF/ICANN Memorandum of Understanding Concerning the Technical Work of the IANA, which prevents it from usurping that jurisdiction:
It does! I generally assume mDNS to just be available on every device these days. But I've also seen managed environments where mDNS has been turned off or blocked at the firewall.
The ICANN root zone only contains gTLDs and ccTLDs which are delegated. Other TLDs which are explicitly reserved for non-public use, like .localhost, .test, or .invalid, don't appear on that list either.
I think a more correct place to look at would be the gTLD Applicant Guidebook[1][2], section "2.2.1.2.1 Reserved Names", which I guess should be updated to now include "INTERNAL".
Though that list apparently includes all reserved names, not only those reserved for non-public use.
You can use a public subdomain like box.uuid.california.usa.mydns.org but we need something short like .l or .lan :) .home.arpa is terrible.
I have been using .l personally for a couple of years and it works fine except Chrome won't recognize it as a tld and would start a google search. Once it is visited a couple of times, it autocompletes it as a webpage so it's quite usable afterall.
Ref: https://www.icann.org/en/board-activities-and-meetings/mater...