[mdnsext] .local vs msftdomain.local

[Alf Watt <[e-mail]>]

Much to my personal and professional embarrassment our internal IT
department here uses 'machine.ourdomain.local' as a private unicast domain
name as recommended some time ago by microsoft[1]. In particular KB 296250
[2] makes the following suggestions regarding private domain names:

"Make the name a private domain name that is used for name resolution on
the internal Small Business Server network. This name is usually
configured with the first-level domain of .local. At the present time, the
.local domain name is not registered on the Internet."

"The natural separation of internal and external networks occurs because
of the use of a separate internal namespace. A client query generated from
the Internet for www.contoso.local does not return any valid domain
information because .local, at the present time, is not a registered
domain name."

"Name resolution problems that are created by using a publicly registered
domain name can be avoided by planning the private namespace around a
.local first-level domain so that, in this example, Contoso.com and
Contoso.local are both available to internal clients, but Contoso.com is
only available to external internet clients. "

Any suggestions from the group on how to combat this misconfiguration?
Particularly, how do we get MSFT to renounce their previous tech-notes and
update their suggested practices around this?

Thanks,
Alf

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.local#Microsoft_recommendations
[2] http://support.microsoft.com/kb/296250