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In favor of reverse domain name notation

Posted on 2020-05-28

What if instead of typing "example.com" into the URL bar, you typed "com.example"?

This is called reverse domain name notation. At first, it doesn't sound like a good idea. After all, how nice does "com.example" sound? But if you give it more thought, it slowly grows on you.

Wikipedia article on reverse domain name notation

Reverse domain name notation more accurately represents the structure of the domain name system. This is (a very simplified version of) what happens when you look up "www.example.com":

• Search for the ".com" nameserver
• Search for the "example.com" nameserver
• Get the IP address for "www.example.com"

Since domain names are processed in reverse order, it would make more sense to write them in reverse order.

Reverse domain name notation would allow companies to take full advantage of their top-level domains.

• "product.company" becomes "company.product"
• "docs.company.com" would be replaced by "company.docs"
• "mail.company.com" would be replaced by "company.mail"

With reverse domain name notation a company wouldn't have to purchase every single "company.*" domain in existence to protect their brand. They would only need to have control of the "company" top-level domain.

And who says we even need "com", "org", and other top-level domains. We can allow registering domains at the root level. How clean does "https://example/" look?

Notes

• If reverse domain name notation was adopted, "www" would become the hottest top-level domain. For this reason it should probably be reserved.
• You could still have "example.com", by purchasing the "example" domain and adding "com" as a subdomain. You could then have "example.com" and "example.org" for the price of one domain.

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This work is licensed under a CC-BY-SA-4.0 license.

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