The mDNS specification requires that fully qualified domain name be announced on the network. If a Server is not configured with a fully qualified domain name then mDNS requires that the ‘local’ top level domain be appended to the domain names. The ‘local’ top level domain indicates that the domain can only be considered to be unique within the subnet where the domain name was used. This means Clients need to be aware that URLs received from any LDS-ME other than the one on the Client’s computer could contain ‘local’ domains which are not reachable or will connect to a different computer with the same domain name that happens to be on the same subnet as the Client. It is recommended that Clients ignore all URLs with the ‘local’ top level domain unless they are returned from the LDS-ME running on the same computer.

System administrators can eliminate this problem by configuring a normal DNS with the fully qualified domain names for all computers which need to be accessed by Clients outside the MulticastSubnet.

Servers configured with fully qualified domain names should specify the fully qualified domain name in its ApplicationInstance Certificate. Servers shall not append the ‘local’ top level domain to any domains declared in their Certificate; an unqualified domain name is used if a more appropriate qualifer does not exist. Clients using a URL returned from an LDS-ME shall ignore the ‘local’ top level domain when checking the domain against the Server Certificate.

Note that domain name validation is a necessary but not sufficient check against rogue Servers or man-in-the-middle attacks when Server Certificates do not contain fully qualified domain names. The Certificate trust relationship established by administrators is the primary mechanism used to protect against these risks.