Setting up a free *.city.state.us locality domain (2025)

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• Hacker News
• Seeing the list of contacts for delegated subdomains reminds me of a time when there were a lot more local ISP's. Inreach.com for Stockton, lodinet (possibly an ISP?) for Lodi..

  But the one that really shocked me was https://www.snowcrest.com/mysc/ - which seems to still be up and running?? I wonder if the login page for webmail (ISP-provided email was a thing! And even hosting space!) still works.

  https://web.archive.org/web/20090909141302/http://neustar.us...

  by CalRobert
• And now it's getting well stress tested
  by _joel
• Interesting that they still have an old school webcam.
  by thesuitonym
• Here in the Boston area, the first commercial ISP https://www.theworld.com/ appears to still be up and running, and is similarly frozen in time.
  by nstory
• Just discovered that mission.sf.ca.us[0] already redirects to Noisebridge[1]

  Of the "hackers" to get there before me, I'm happy it's them!

  [0]http://mission.sf.ca.us

  [1]https://www.noisebridge.net

  by jumploops
• unfortunately, whomever set that up didn't do it right. http to mission.sf.ca.us works, but if you do https, it's broken. The cert isn't for that, and if you ignore that, then you get sent to http://netisland.net/
  by fragmede
• Will WHOIS requests leak my address?

  Nope. Even though you must supply your address in the registration form, a WHOIS request for your locality domain will only show information about the registrar.

  Perhaps I am misunderstanding their statement but unless something recently changed this is not true. The .US TLD does not permit whois privacy services. The full legal name and address of the registrant will be shown in my experience and I could not find a registrar that would deviate from this.

  Are they offering delegation of sub-domains of some domains they purchased perhaps? The example they gave did not suggest this if that is so. If that is the case then whois does not really apply unless they are giving different answers in their whois for sub-domains assuming their whois would be queried.

  That is why I opted for .org for a small town that I operated not for official purposes as per the banner a website for in my spare time. When using a .US one can register it in the name of a company or the city can register it themselves through their own government to avoid a persons personal information being listed. Ensure auto-renew is enabled when assisting a city government as people come and go. Pay as far in advance for as many years as possible.

  by Bender
• Maybe that’s only for registering primary domains and not subdomains?
  by DrewADesign
• *.eu.org, was (is) an early attempt at something similar this side of the pond, starting in the early 2000s, also free although community managed, but still surviving. Used to be a good way to get a free "proper" domain delegation rather than a shitty iframe alias soon to become ad-ridden, or banner-ridden in those days should I say. Good for 1337 IPv6 hostnames for IRC as well.
  by wowczarek
• In Germany it is possible to register an ENUM domain for a phone number. This provides a DNS mapping from the E164 number to DNS records, e.g. for IP phones, etc.

  Decentralized and under user control, no shitty silos like FaceTime, WhatsApp.

  ENUM stands for “Telephone Number Mapping.” It is essentially a bridge between the world of telecommunications and the Internet. With a single ENUM domain, you can combine all your contact options under your familiar phone number:

  https://www.denic.de/en/products/enum-domains/

  by car
• I saw this lets you do Fax over IP. Any other advantages or usecases?
  by captn3m0
• Sadly ENUM is dead or buried or both for many countries.
  by wowczarek
• The main point of ENUM was compatibility with open SIP, unfortunately that never really happened and most SIP operators do not accept incoming calls from public internet (and do not route outgoing calls based on ENUM).
  by zajio1am
• I want to set one up now and use it to call out the city board members taking kickbacks from flock.
  by dawnerd
• This is assuredly not happening.
  by davidu
• Why would city board members care what your domain name is?
  by prepend
• This is probably not the kind of approach to taking out new domain names you should encourage. A lot of other causes might think this is their way to set up an "official" representation of their strongly held political beliefs, and I think you can imagine where that might go with some groups.
  by pugworthy
• Some similarities to *.<lastname>.name -- one of which is that the Public Suffix List thinks you're part of a single site with others you have no control over. Another is the weird registration procedure, but this one is weirder!
  by cormorant
• Apparently VeriSign plans to discontinue .name: https://itp.cdn.icann.org/en/files/consensus-policies/rsep-2...
  by dextercd
• Seeing the *.k12.oh.us in the delegated subdomains brought me back to highschool. When I was little I always wondered why the city name was before k12. Didn't know it was structured like that everywhere.
  by kiddico
• Our school and town dropped all the .mi.us domains and they have their own domains now, why would they do that? I know it used to be k12 too.
  by T3RMINATED
• My local school district somehow has <schooldistrict>.us

  Not sure how that came about.

  by bentcorner
• mayo.k12.sc.us was my high school. It seems a shame they're not still using it.
  by MithrilTuxedo
• Seeing the .k12.oh.us in the delegated subdomains brought me back to highschool.*

  When I was in my wandering days before there were search engines, I would always enter http://travel.state.*st*.us, or http://travel.*st*.us to look up tourism web sites.

  It was unusual for a city or state to not have a travel.city.state.us, or travel.state.us domain.

  by reaperducer
• I managed a couple ".k12.oh.us" domains back in the day. The employees hated the domain in their email addresses, but I found it very logical. I saw all kinds screwed-up addresses in bounce messages forwarded to my company address when "can't email people in the District" tickets got sent my way (a lot of "districtname.oh.k12.us", etc). I guess it wasn't so simple for "normies".

  One of the schools ended up using a ".com" domain that was one character longer than their ".k12.oh.us" domain but easier to tell people verbally (I guess).

  I also managed a "co._countyname_.oh.us" domain, too. Again, universal hatred for the domain in email addresses, and again I found it logical and reasonable.

  The County government ended-up getting a ".gov" domain that was 5 characters longer than their "co._countyname_.oh.us" domain and, in my opinion, hell to tell people verbally ("It's Countyname County Ohio dot Gov. Yes-- all one word. The words County and Ohio are spelled out. No, not O-H-- Ohio is spelled out." >sigh<)

  by EvanAnderson
• School districts are often supersets of municipalities.
  by anamexis
• Having a domain under the .us TLD once seemed appealing to me for practical reasons: It's short, consistently inexpensive, and hasn't already sold the vast majority of its useful namespace to squatters.

  Unfortunately, it forbids WHOIS privacy services, which makes it a privacy and security hazard for personal domains. Pity, that.

  by foresto
• you can literally write anything in the whois though

  registrars have forwarded me ICANN notices about having info verification for 10 years and nothing happened

  nothingburger

  by yieldcrv
• From TFA:

  Will WHOIS requests leak my address?

  Nope. Even though you must supply your address in the registration form, a WHOIS request for your locality domain will only show information about the registrar.

  by hungryhobbit
• Yes, I have a 3 letter .us domain that I’ve had for a while. Hard to get a three letter domain in any other popular TLD.
  by NetMageSCW