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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./

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0d0h0m0s
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    I've wondered that too. Will be interested to find out the answer. Great question. – NickG Mar 28 '10 at 19:05
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    Duplicate of [my own question](http://superuser.com/questions/78408/how-does-http-to-work), short answer is that the tld (domain suffix) is `to`, the site was set up on the tld itself, which is perfectly possible, just not often done. It also doesn't need the trailing dot! – Phoshi Mar 28 '10 at 19:09
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    The dot on the end ensures that the `to` is treated as a fully qualified domain name (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fully_qualified_domain_name) as opposed to a hostname on your local network. – coneslayer Mar 28 '10 at 19:49

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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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  • `http://to` (without the dot) works for me in IE. Firefox apparently needs an extra `/` at the end to not consult Google, though. – Joey Mar 28 '10 at 20:15