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Example.com Has Changed

Posted by timothy on from the foo-baz-is-now-frum-burz dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The familiar example.com domain, reserved for private testing, has been updated. Visiting the domain in a web browser no longer displays any content; instead, visitors are redirected to an explanatory page on IANA's website at iana.org/domains/example/. Other example domains such as example.net are also affected. Is this a bad change? Will the redirect cause problems for anybody?"

25 of 109 comments (clear)

  1. For documentation purposes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The domains are designed to be used as examples in free text, not to be visited. Not to be pinged, scraped, tracerouted or anything else that involved actually accessing them via the Internet.

    So how does "Will the redirect cause problems for anybody?" make any sense?

    1. Re:For documentation purposes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I suppose the big difference would be for ISPs and anyone else running DNS servers that redirect failed lookups to their own pages, this would no longer be useful as a test to see if your dns server will actually return NXDOMAIN for anything.

    2. Re:For documentation purposes by Dynedain · · Score: 4, Informative

      Example.com at least isn't a change in that scenario because it used to resolve to a specific server. Now that it resolves with a redirect, I don't see much difference at the DNS layer.

      --
      I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
    3. Re:For documentation purposes by maxwell+demon · · Score: 2

      Just use a TLD of invalid for that, like example.invalid.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    4. Re:For documentation purposes by russotto · · Score: 2

      I suppose the big difference would be for ISPs and anyone else running DNS servers that redirect failed lookups to their own pages, this would no longer be useful as a test to see if your dns server will actually return NXDOMAIN for anything.

      The example.com domain hasn't returned NXDOMAIN for a long time (if ever). It had a valid IP address with a webserver hosting a static page. Now instead of that static page it has a redirect. If you want an NXDOMAIN, try "example.invalid" (or anything else dot invalid).

    5. Re:For documentation purposes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It doesn't make sense, but it's probably a requirement that most inane non-issue articles be posted with a leading question that stirs up discussion where little is needed and controversy where none exists.

  2. you might have bigger problem by JonySuede · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If your application is so broken that it depends on the behavior of exemple.com to be correct, you have a bigger problems than this.

    --
    Jehovah be praised, Oracle was not selected
    1. Re:you might have bigger problem by Bogtha · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Then that was a bug in Darcs. example.com was never a guarantee that any particular URL served from that domain would fail. Also note that they said that the URL would fail. That is not the same as the domain not existing. example.com has existed for years and years. Presumably they were appending a random string to http://example.com/ and hoping to get a 404. If the test suite was expecting example.com to not exist, then it never would have worked in the first place.

      --
      Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
    2. Re:you might have bigger problem by klapaucjusz · · Score: 3, Interesting

      If you need a dns entry that doesn't exist, pick one that you are authoritative for and make sure it doesn't exist.

      That's exactly what they did:

      -not darcs get http://example.com/foo
      +not darcs get http://darcs.net/nonexistent

    3. Re:you might have bigger problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      The test suite of Darcs needs a domain that doesn't exist. It used to use example.com for that purpose, which now fails:

      Sat Jan 29 16:18:53 CET 2011 Ganesh Sittampalam

          * switch test to use a URL we can make sure will fail

          Seems like the behaviour of http://example.com/ changed to start serving

          pages at all URLs...

      ".example" is recommended for use in documentation or as examples.
      ".invalid" is intended for use in online construction of domain names that are sure to be invalid and which it is obvious at a glance are invalid.

      Guess they should read the rfc.

  3. No by OverlordQ · · Score: 4, Informative

    GET / HTTP/1.1
    Host: www.example.com

    HTTP/1.0 302 Found
    Location: http://www.iana.org/domains/example/
    Server: BigIP
    Connection: Keep-Alive
    Content-Length: 0

    If that breaks your program, you're doing it wrong.

    --
    Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
    1. Re:No by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Informative

      It won't break your program, but it might break your example. I've seen HTTP tutorials that show using telnet to connect to example.com, and getting a response. Now the response is different, so anyone who tries the example will see a redirect instead of a content reply.

      It's not a serious problem, but it may cause a small amount of confusion for a tiny group of people.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    2. Re:No by snowgirl · · Score: 2

      I was a little peeved by the Keep-Alive: yes

      If all you're doing is a redirect, it's like... why would you leave the connection open? "Dude, go here... and um... stick around for a bit, I just want to make sure you don't have anything else to ask about..."

      --
      WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
    3. Re:No by snowgirl · · Score: 2

      Maybe the client was requesting a keep-alive, as all modern browsers expect to do? Or maybe it's an HTTP/1.0 vs. /1.1 difference.

      Yes, HTTP/1.1 automatically assumes keep-alive is desired, while HTTP/1.0 makes the opposite assumption.

      Of course, HTTP/1.1 also requires a Server: entry for all requests as well...

      --
      WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
    4. Re:No by Migala77 · · Score: 2

      I was a little peeved by the Keep-Alive: yes

      If all you're doing is a redirect, it's like... why would you leave the connection open? "Dude, go here... and um... stick around for a bit, I just want to make sure you don't have anything else to ask about..."

      In that case, don't ever look how http://bit.ly/ redirects.

  4. Re:really? by Captain+Spam · · Score: 4, Informative

    It may not matter very much, but it definitely is "news for nerds", in that nerds are the only one who would even notice. They never said it was "news for nerds && stuff that matters".

    --
    Demanding constant attention will only lead to attention.
  5. IANA by captain_dope_pants · · Score: 4, Funny

    They are not a what ?

    --
    while (true != false) process_more_stupid_code();
  6. Re:really? by BatGnat · · Score: 5, Informative

    I don't know, it is pretty Earth shattering news.

    I don't think i will be able to sleep at work today because of it....

  7. In other news... by Chelloveck · · Score: 5, Funny

    The meta-syntactic variable 'foo' now redirects to 'bar'. Please update your placeholders accordingly.

    --
    Chelloveck
    I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
  8. Example please. by gstrickler · · Score: 5, Funny

    Please provide an example of how it should work.

    --
    make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
  9. Re:really? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Yes it is. I'm a nerd and never knew that example.com etc.. were reserved by iana, I thought it was interesting.
    Furthermore unlike MOST slashdot summaries, it wasn't ridiculously sensationalistic and misleading.

  10. Hm. How about tempuri.org by Cyberax · · Score: 2

    Microsoft has been using http://tempuri.org/ as a default namespace in webservices. So far it worked pretty good.

    1. Re:Hm. How about tempuri.org by simplypeachy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Alternatively you could use http://example.com/ instead of making up your own stuff which serves no purpose whatsoever.

    2. Re:Hm. How about tempuri.org by simplypeachy · · Score: 2

      I would trust IANA to ensure the continued availability of the RFC 2606 to the extent that I would not worry about it being pulled. I'd say that since any user that sees $tempuri is testing and/or using the documentation at the time, then they don't need any extra information from $tempuri - it's not there to document - rather as a placeholder for the tester. However, I do agree your points both have merit :-)

  11. Who's askin'? by macraig · · Score: 2

    Is this a bad change? Will the redirect cause problems for anybody?

    Who's askin'? The IANA, or some dude wearing nothing but underwear and a threadbare tinfoil hat?