An Interesting Experiment: WHOIS crossed with DNS (.tel Domains and Network Solutions)

The most interesting (and useful) difference between .tel and other gTLD's (generic top-level domains) is in the DNS. From the Telnic FAQ, "...the value of a .tel domain lies with the ability to host personal (or corporate) contact information directly in the DNS, which can then be universally accessible. This stands in contrast to the typical use of the DNS for other TLDs, in which the DNS only provides a mapping between domain names and IP addresses."

1 - Why This is Useful

Storing contact information in the DNS enables developers to write code which can query these custom .tel DNS records to gather and store information about you, your connections, family, or friends. For example, instead of managing a set of virtual business cards, software can simply map an individual or business to a .tel domain. When a user needs to look-up the email address or phone number of an individual or business, the software can simply run a DNS query against a .tel to retrieve the latest contact information. For example, if all of my friends know that my .tel domain is kolich.tel, their digital Rolodexes can stay current by querying kolich.tel. If my email address changes, I only have to update my .tel information in once place, instead of pinging each friend individually to alert them of the change.


2 - Getting Started

When you purchase a .tel domain from a registrar, like Network Solutions, the registrar will create an account for you on their .tel information management portal. This portal is used to manage the contact information available through your .tel domain. Here's a screen shot of my kolich.tel management control panel from Network Solutions. Note that no knowledge or understanding of DNS is required to own or maintain a .tel domain. All you need to do is login, determine what information you want to share, and your registrar and Telnic will do the rest.


3 - How It Works

Be warned, you cannot host your own web-site under a .tel domain. However, you can add custom MX records to your .tel which allow you to redirect email from your .tel to your service provider of choice. From the record types page on telnic.org, "...compared to traditional top-level domains, the .tel DNS uses a different set of record types. User-specified Address and CNAME records are prohibited, and the following are allowed:

* TXT - text record for storing keywords and other freeform text.
* LOC - location records containing latitude, longitude and altitude data.
* NAPTR (Naming Authority Pointer Record) - a record holding a URL and an Enumservice that indicates the type of URL information, such as email or phone number."

In other words, the contact information you provided through your registrars .tel control panel is embedded inside of these DNS records. This is the true power of a .tel domain.

I wanted to prove to myself that this really does work, so I used dig to verify that my own .tel information is correct. Here's an example of using dig to query my kolich.tel NAPTR record against OpenDNS:

(web@skull)/> dig @208.67.222.222 kolich.tel NAPTR

; <<>> DiG 9.3.4-P1 <<>> @208.67.222.222 kolich.tel NAPTR
; (1 server found)
;; global options: printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 58782 ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 3, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0 ;; QUESTION SECTION: ;kolich.tel. IN NAPTR ;; ANSWER SECTION: kolich.tel. 53 IN NAPTR 100 102 "u" \ "E2U+web:http+x-lbl:Twitter" "!^.*$!http://twitter.com/markkolich!" . kolich.tel. 53 IN NAPTR 100 103 "u" \ "E2U+web:http+x-lbl:LinkedIn" "!^.*$!http://www.linkedin.com/in/markkolich!" . kolich.tel. 53 IN NAPTR 100 100 "u" \ "E2U+web:http+x-lbl:Blog" "!^.*$!http://www.kolich.com!" . ;; Query time: 15 msec ;; SERVER: 208.67.222.222#53(208.67.222.222) ;; WHEN: Sun May 3 23:06:09 2009 ;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 275 Sure enough, my kolich.tel NAPTR record corresponds to the information found at http://kolich.tel. Now, let's verify my TXT record: (web@skull)/> dig @208.67.222.222 kolich.tel TXT

; <<>> DiG 9.3.4-P1 <<>> @208.67.222.222 kolich.tel TXT
; (1 server found)
;; global options: printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 53864
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 3, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;kolich.tel. IN TXT

;; ANSWER SECTION:
kolich.tel. 60 IN TXT \
".tsm" "1" "pddx" "1"
kolich.tel. 60 IN TXT \
"Mark S. Kolich\010Engineer, Entrepreneur, Consultant"
kolich.tel. 60 IN TXT \
".tkw" "1" "nl" "" "fn" "Mark" "ln" "Kolich"

;; Query time: 18 msec
;; SERVER: 208.67.222.222#53(208.67.222.222)
;; WHEN: Sun May 3 23:11:28 2009
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 157


Yep, no surprise, my TXT record also matches the information I shared on http://kolich.tel.


4 - Conclusion

In general, I'm quite impressed with the .tel concept. It's clearly an innovative and unique way to let folks stay in touch with one another using some relatively unexplored features of DNS. For the most part, I'd describe .tel as a cross between a typical DNS and WHOIS query. Unfortunately, .tel won't be as useful as I'd like until more users and software platforms adopt it as an information-sharing standard. Given the abundance of free social networking services, it may be hard to convince most users to pay an annual fee to keep their contact information online. However, if a large online player like Google begins to adopt .tel as a standard in many of its services, .tel domains could become valuable and useful tools. Until then, see you at kolich.tel.


5 - Further Reading

* Telnic Developers FAQ
* .tel on Wikipedia
* From Network Solutions, how do I get started using my .tel domain?
* The .tel Privacy Model
* The Telnic homepage
* I'm a fan of .tel, just skeptical of its chances of success


Tags:

* .tel,
* domains,
* netsol

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