The previous posts covered what SSL is and how it works. To apply SSL to a site, you need to obtain an SSL certificate.

To obtain an SSL certificate, you need a domain to be verified against. You can easily get one from a domestic domain provider.

• Gabia
• Whois
• Cafe24

The providers above offer a variety of services beyond just domains, including hosting.

There are many other providers as well, both domestic and overseas. Prices and policies vary by provider, so shopping around can get you a good deal.

Prices vary depending on the TLD (Top Level Domain), ranging from just a few thousand won per year on the cheap end, up to several hundred thousand won on the expensive end.

TLD?
This refers to the top-level domain that comes at the end of a URL, such as com or net. You can find more about TLDs in a previous post, URI? URL? URN? Distinguishing Resource Identifiers.

Of course, getting a domain through the methods above is fine, but it costs money. If you're actually planning to deploy a real website, buying a domain is naturally the right way to go.

But if your purpose is simply testing things like domain connection or applying SSL, even a small amount of money can feel like a waste.

Fortunately, Freenom offers free domains, so you can use one without any financial burden for simple testing purposes.

There are a few caveats to keep in mind when using Freenom.

1. Limited available TLDs

Commonly used TLDs include things like com and net, but Freenom only supports certain ccTLDs like ga and ml.

• tk (Tokelau): a New Zealand territory, the Tokelau Islands
• ml (Mali): Mali
• ga (Gabon): Gabon
• gq (Equatorial Guinea): Equatorial Guinea
• cf (Central African Republic): Central African Republic

You can't pick a popular TLD, but since it's free, that's a reasonable tradeoff. As will be explained below, applying a free domain to an actual live service is a bad idea anyway, for other reasons.

2. Miss the renewal window and it becomes paid

A domain you obtain must be renewed at intervals of up to one year. Renewal is possible within 2 weeks of the expiration date.

Renewal itself doesn't cost anything, but the problem arises if you miss the renewal window and the domain expires. Once a domain expires like this, you'd need to obtain it again, but it then gets classified as a Special Domain, requiring a fee of roughly $9.

$9 is enough to get a domain with a decent TLD elsewhere, so there's not much reason to buy it back here anyway.

3. Forced hijacking of popular domains

This is the decisive reason why you should never use a Freenom domain for an actual live service.

Suppose you applied a Freenom domain to your service, and luckily, your service became popular. Naturally, growing popularity means growing traffic.

The problem is that Freenom monitors this kind of access traffic. You might think, "Great, maybe they'll give us usage statistics?" Of course that would be nice, but there's no way a free service would include such a convenient feature.

In reality, once a domain generates a certain amount of traffic and gains popularity, they slap the label Special Domain on it and forcibly convert it to a paid domain.

In case 2, you at least bear some responsibility for failing to renew in time, but this case is simply outright domain theft, and there's no way around it. It's not even framed as "if traffic gets too high, the next renewal won't be possible" — it's simply that a domain with high traffic can be seized at any time.

You could just get a new domain, sure, but the domain change causes confusion for people who were already using it and damages the trustworthiness of your service, which severely harms your ability to operate it.

Overseas, there have also been a great many complaints about this exact behavior from Freenom.

4. Limited DNS server support

The DNS server isn't universally supported. When configuring your computer's network IP settings, you can also configure the DNS server, but to access a domain issued by Freenom, the network you're using needs to use a DNS server that has Freenom's information. That much makes sense on its own, but the problem is that Freenom's compatibility is severely limited.

In the case of domestic (Korean) DNS servers, Freenom's domain information often isn't shared, which can result in the domain being inaccessible in a domestic network environment.

It is possible if you use the DNS provided by Freenom itself, or an internationally recognized DNS server like Google DNS, but the fact that it can't be accessed in environments using certain domestic DNS providers (like KT) is a major drawback.

Unless your site already has substantial recognition and share within Korea, most people using domestic DNS won't even be able to access your site, even if it shows up in a Google search.

Follow the steps below to obtain a domain. Note that since this is a site based overseas, the site speed might be a bit slow.

Go to Freenom and sign up for an account. It supports Google social login, so feel free to use that instead.

Search for the domain name you want in the search box. Selecting [Services] -> [Register a New Domain] from the menu will bring up the search page.

In the case of rwb0104, all 5 of the 5 free domains available can be applied.

As mentioned earlier, there are a total of 5 free domains available.

Choose the TLD you want from among them.

Here, we'll select the tk TLD. Click the [Checkout] button above to proceed.

Choose the domain options.

As you can see, there's not much to it, but make sure to set [Period] to 12 months in the combo box on the right. You can use it for up to 12 months for free, and it can be renewed within 2 weeks of the expiration date.

Select [Use DNS] and enter your own IP.

You can check your actual IP address here. Don't enter a private IP such as 192.168.0.x.

The screenshot above shows the configuration for connecting rwb0104.tk and www.rwb0104.tk to matching IP addresses. Subdomains such as the www prefix above can be added or removed as needed through DNS settings, so there's no need to worry about it much.

Once you've finished all the settings, click [Continue] to proceed.

Whether it's 100 won or 0 won, it's technically still a "purchase," so proceed to purchase it in accordance with the purchase terms.

Confirm that it shows $0.00. If everything looks fine, agree to the terms and click [Complete Order].

A purchase confirmation will appear, but since it's free anyway, there's no need to worry about it — just move on.

You can check the list of domains you've obtained under [Services] -> [My Domains].

Clicking the [Manage Domain] button lets you change or delete the domain's settings.

Now let's use the domain to access your server.

Start up an unmodified default Tomcat instance. You normally would have accessed it via xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:8080 or localhost:8080, but now that the IP xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is linked to your domain, let's try accessing it via that domain instead.

Try accessing rwb0104.tk:8080 — if it connects without any issues, the domain has been correctly linked to your IP.

• Check whether it connects via xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:8080
• If it does connect, that means external access works fine, so check whether the IP linked to the domain is correct
• If it doesn't connect, that means it's not accessible externally to begin with, so check whether there's an issue with your firewall or port communication
• If you're on a router-based environment, check whether port forwarding has been configured for the IP address

Freenom has some genuinely awkward drawbacks that make it difficult to use in practice. Even so, for domain-related testing or simple study purposes, there's really no site quite like it.

Now that you've obtained a domain as well, let's move on to how to obtain an SSL certificate.