Wildcard TLDs and the Web Server Survey

Since Verisign wildcarded the .com and .net Top Level Domains [TLDs], some people have become concerned that this might pollute the results of the Web Server Survey, eventually reaching the situation when 99.9% of the hostnames found are running Linux and Apache - Verisign's platform of choice for the site to which they redirect otherwise unresolved requests.

However, Verisign was not the first TLD operator to think of wildcarding their domains, and we already maintain a mechanism for preventing hostnames that resolve to the ip addresses of these wildcarding systems from being included in the survey.

Our current list of wildcarded TLDs and excluded ip addresses is as follows:

      *.AC has address 194.205.62.122
        *.CC has address 206.253.214.102
        *.COM has address 64.94.110.11
        *.CX has address 219.88.106.80
        *.MP has address 202.128.12.163
        *.MUSEUM has address 195.7.77.20
        *.NET has address 64.94.110.11
        *.NU has addresses 64.55.105.9, 212.181.91.6
        *.PH has address 203.119.4.6
        *.PW is an alias for wfb.dnsvr.com. (65.125.231.178, 216.98.141.250)
        *.SH has address 194.205.62.62
        *.TD is an alias for www.nic.TD. (146.101.245.154)
        *.TK has addresses 195.20.32.86, 195.20.32.83
        *.TM has address 194.205.62.42
        *.WS has address 216.35.187.246