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June 22, 2009

Oddities and observations

When you've looked at as many PTR names as I have over the past few years, you notice some things; trends and weirdnesses, likelihoods and rarities. Here are a few of the things I've noticed, with commentary where appropriate.

  • Bulgarian companies tend to use "BG" as part of domain names they register in non-.bg TLDs. Maybe their ccTLD registrar is difficult to use?

  • Finns are apparently amused by the use of Roman numerals in PTRs

  • Brazilian network engineers are overwhelmingly drawn to the N-N-N-N.$domain PTR naming format, or, alternately, host-N-N-N-N.$domain.

  • Swedish housing associations like to register domains in .ac (Ascension Island) for some reason. Also, there seem to be a lot of Swedish housing associations with their own Web sites. (Oddly, German firms don't register domains in .ag, Danes don't register domains in .as, and Swedes haven't pushed for the creation of .ab)

  • A rather high proportion of network service providers stick their webmail access page on the host named with their domain, so www.foo.net is their main Web site, but foo.net is their webmail.

  • The vast majority of Cooperative Telephone companies are in the Western US and Canada and, for some reason, Argentina.

  • Eastern European ISPs are very, very proud of their optical networks.

  • Polish domains, and their Web sites, are extremely likely to be focused on a single city or region, and to express a strong regional identity.

  • Also, Polish domain registration data is likely to contain both the organization name and the names of the primary contacts, but in the Organization field; if you do not speak or read Polish, you might be led to believe that half of the companies in Poland end in what looks like someone's name.

  • Canada, as you'd expect, has the most organized and informative whois output of any nation in the world, often with complete descriptions of the range of activities a company is involved in, or the types of degrees granted by a university. O, Canada!

  • There is a staggeringly large number of nations for whom there is no whois service whatever; and an embarrassingly large number of ccTLDs who only offer whois service via a Web site. Many of the latter are behind CAPTCHAs of dubious quality (like Poland's, which apparently randomly decides whether to require case sensitivity).

  • I don't know how anyone can read Arabic at the size it is usually presented at on Web sites. (Maybe it's just my only Arabic fonts are really small, I don't know).

  • Underscore is not, and has never been, legal in PTR records, and yet 007mundo.com, 11abg.net, 3s.pl, 8x.com.br, acsplus.com, adnc.com, am.poznan.pl, amnetsal.com, andrzejow.net, astral.ro, asu.edu, atenco.net, bardstown.com, bell.net.mt, bordercomm.com, btc-bci.com, btc-net.bg, cc.la.us, cebridge.net, certelnet.com.br, net-uno.net, clnet.cz, cogentco.com, colomsat.net.co, compnet.com.pl, compower.pl, ctbcnetsuper.com.br, ctcis.net, cvalley.net, datacomsa.pl, datastream.com.mt, detecsa.net, digicelbroadband.com, directservices.com, doggy.com.au, dom_bci_prod.cl, e-awa.net, e-kolay.net, easynet.net.au, edb.com, emcali.net.co, emtelco.com, ert.com.co, etb.net.co, europronet.ba, foremosttech.net, fretel.com, fsu.edu, fullcom.cl, g-node.com.au, g-service.ru, gemytel.net, gilat.com.pe, gotonets.com, grm.net, gvt-uol.com.br, harvard.edu, homei.net.ua, koc.net, hpmg.com, hyperband.com, idial.com.br, impsat.net.ve, in-addr.arpa, infosys.ru, infotelecom.es, inode.at, inter-c.pl, inter.net.il, interdom.net.pl, intnet.bj, ip-network.net, iptelsl.net, irishbroadband.ie, iusacell.net, ivnet.ru, k12.ne.us, k12.pa.us, kevenet.hu, kh.edu.tw, knu.ac.kr, krosoft.pl, ktkadan.cz, kubangsm.ru, kutztown.edu, lakesnet.com, lauderdalemarinecenter.com, linktel.net, marpin.dm, melitaonline.net, misc, n4a.pl, nbis.net, ndemand.com, neobee.net, netasia.net, neterra.net, netvox.ru, newskies.net, nsysu.edu.tw, omni-tech.net, onvol.net, optus.net.au, orbisnet.cz, phonewave.net, plugon.com.br, marpin.dm, port33.ru, porttelecom.ru, preciscom.com, pro-lan.net, psv.ru, revealsystems.net, ridgewoodcable.com, rsadvnet.it, sarenet.es, satnet.net, seltecnet.ca, serdi.ru, simonet.com.br, sinor.ru, sintmaarten.net, sky.com.mt, skypipeline.com, slcomm.net, smartbro.net, smrw.lodz.pl, solbroadband.com, solunet.com.ar, spartan-net.net, stv.ru, suonline.net, superweb.com.ua, surnet.cl, susice-net.cz, suttk.ru, t-mobile.sk, tauzen.net, teklinks.com, telekom.ru, teleline.hu, telenet.ge, telkom.net.id, telusmobility.com, tktelekom.pl, tmxnet.pl, tnn.net, ttn.ne.jp, tv-naruto.ne.jp, twt.it, uni-duesseldorf.de, uni-lj.si, unlp.edu.ar, uraic.ru, urbe.edu, urjc.es, vsnl.net.in, wcg.net, websurfer.com.np, xcelco.on.ca, xcnetworks.com, zapp.ch, and zappway.ch all use them.

  • An absolutely astonishing number of domains have zones so broken that there is no dot (but often an underscore or dash) between the supposed "host" part and the presumed "domain" part.

Posted by schampeo at June 22, 2009 5:58 PM

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