On: DNS Esoterica – Why you can't dig Switzerland

[xenophonf]

To avoid ambiguous queries like this, include the root zone in the domain name:

  dig ch. ns

  dig in. ns

Both return the expected results.

[kuschku → xenophonf]

And to avoid ambiguity, you can just include the root zone in all URLs you’re using as well (unless the server you’re talking to doesn’t implement the DNS RFCs correctly, which sadly is getting more and more common in recent years)

[teddyh → xenophonf]

That’s literally what the article says.

[xenophonf → teddyh]

Except upvoted comments continue to propagate confusion over what's actually happening by omitting the root zone from example hostname queries.

While this is a fully qualified domain name:

  www.example.com

This is the actual domain name:

  www.example.com.

The linked article and doesn't really explain why someone should add the trailing dot to the hostname. I do: It's the name of the root DNS zone and unambiguously identifies the `dig` parameter as a hostname.