For some reasons, work has taken me to investigate current usage of Internationalized country code top-level domain. Something I came across all the way back almost two decades ago.

I remember it was a big thing being promoted by NICs. As a web engineer, I have also found it to be an interesting technical endeavor (with Punycode and etc) and spent my own effort to make sure the <IDN>.tw site I managed at the time also resolves on <IDN>.台灣, given that per NIC rule they auto-register you with the IDN ccTLD when you register for a second level ccTLD domain. Edit: I misremember this.

Fast forward to today: I was struggling to find a live website that resolves on an IDN ccTLD hostname. I no longer handled that <IDN>.台灣 website and my successor broke it (probably because of me failing to document my work.) The university websites that I know of at the time all stopped resolving on their IDN ccTLD hostnames. Hell, even the TWNIC website doesn’t resolve on twnic.台灣!

Eventually through the wonder of Wikipedia, I found the one website that resolves: уміц.укр, Ukrainian Network Informational Centre. It is good enough for me even though it won’t connect over HTTPS.

Ukrainians never disappoint.