Re: does a home user on dialup need a domain name?

[Douglas Allan Tutty <dtutty@porchlight.ca>]

On Tue, May 08, 2007 at 09:45:01AM -0600, Paul E Condon wrote:
> On Tue, May 08, 2007 at 08:40:16AM -0400, Douglas Allan Tutty wrote:
> > On Mon, May 07, 2007 at 10:03:19PM -0400, Wayne Topa wrote:
> > > Douglas Allan Tutty(dtutty@porchlight.ca) is reported to have said:
> > > > On Mon, May 07, 2007 at 03:39:07PM -0700, Andrew Sackville-West wrote:
 > 
> > The question is do I need to use a domain name?
> > 
> 
> The short answer is NO. The longer answer starts with 'Well, it
> depends on ...'
> 
 
> For convenience, I have all FQDN appear in all copies of /etc/hosts on
> my LAN. That way I have avoided learning how to set up a proper DNS
> lookup system. 
> 
 
> Keep in mind that these name assignments link a name to an IP address
> that must be inaccessable from the internet. So, the name that you
> assign must also be inaccessable from the internet. This gives you a
> lot of freedom of choise in name assignment. However, don't try to
> name one of your hosts 'lists.debian.org', or you will loose contact
> with this list!
> 

Thanks Paul,

Yes, I have identical /etc/hosts on all boxes (yeah scp).  I know about
NAT/masq and have shorewall do that.

As far as inaccessible domainnames is there a TLD reserved (the way that
ip addresses 192.168.*.* are unrouteable), something that will never be a
domaine accessible from the internet?  Should I use a trailing '.' at
the end or not?  

Thanks,

Doug.