From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
.local
| Introduced |
|
| TLD type |
Pseudo-domain-style address suffix |
| Status |
Not in root but used by the mDNS protocol. |
| Registry |
Machines on the local net can automatically register an address. |
| Sponsor |
Apple, Inc. |
| Intended use |
network discovery and configuration |
| Actual use |
Local Area Network name resolution |
| Documents |
Developer page |
| Dispute policies |
|
| Website |
Mac OS X features |
.local is a pseudo-top-level domain used by the mDNS network discovery protocol. It is also often used by administrators of Microsoft Windows Active Directory environments as the top-level DNS domain for an internal company network that is not intended to be reachable directly from the outside world. If a computer running Mac OS X is not assigned a domain name by the DNS server, it will identify itself as "hostname.local". The host name can be set in the Sharing Preference Pane.
Name resolution issues can arise if Bonjour and/or Multicast-DNS is used in conjunction with a DNS network with a .local domain, therefore .localhost or .test could be used as an alternative to .local.
[edit] See also
- Zeroconf
- Bonjour - Apple's OpenSource implementation
- Avahi - Linux/UNIX Community OpenSource implementation
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