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Possible Duplicate:
How does hxxp://to./ work?

I'm pretty confused because this URL shortener doesn't have a domain suffix. How does this work?

http://to./

0d0h0m0s
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1 Answers1

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The dot on the end means the root domain. Domains such as www.example.com are represented in DNS as www.example.com.. to is a country level domain for Tonga, a small island country, such as .us for the United States or .ie for Ireland. The registrar has pointed the root domain for that country to a URL shortener.

The reason the . is necessary is because most programs will assume you mean to.com if you just typed in http://to/ .

It would be equally possible from a technical standpoint for a shortener to use http://us./ or http://ie./ but the TLD registrar for those is very unlikely to allow it.

Macha
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