Example.com?

[furca]

I just went to example.com out of boredom. But it looks like the government has taken "Hostage" over the domain.

Why would they need to use it for "Documentation"?

You have reached this web page by typing "example.com", "example.net", or "example.org" into your web browser.

These domain names are reserved for use in documentation and are not available for registration. See RFC 2606, Section 3.

 

[Steen]

Darn IANA gets all the good domains and doesn't even use them.

IE. a.com (etc).

 

[Capitalwebhost]

Example.com/net/org are for just that, used as example links. Used for placeholders while designing sites, creating example documentation, etc.

Nothing to do with taking hostage..lol.

 

[diverge]

This is so people can use variations of example.com in their documentation or website. For example, a hypothetical POP3 walkthrough might say...

type your ISP's mail server in the "Incoming mail server" box, i.e., "mail.example.com"

... and not fear for accidentally driving traffic to a malicious site, porn site, competitor, or simply create confusion. They should have done this with test.com and domain.com as well, IMHO.

 

[Domagon]

example.com is an important domain - heck, I'm surprised it even resolves ... not sure if that's a good thing or not, but anyways I often enter in [email protected] at sites that require an email address to access - obviously that method doesn't work for sites that send a confirmation email, but many sites still don't.

Ron

 

[jberryhill]

RFC 2026

http://www.apps.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2606.html
3 Reserved Example Second Level Domain Names
The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) also currently has the following second level domain names reserved which can be used as examples.

example.com
example.net
example.org

heck, I'm surprised it even resolves ... not sure if that's a good thing or not

No, it's not supposed to resolve. There was some discussion about that when the ICANNidiots gave it live dns records. The entire point was that example.com is NOT SUPPOSED to resolve.

 

[NameYourself]

Why not reserve YourDomain.com, ExampleDomain.com, and countless others. Where should the line be drawn. I'm still not quite sure why the single letters A.com, B.com, C.com etc.. are also reserved. These domains are serving no legitimate purpose and while I see the idea in not having example.com live so that it can be used as the "unofficial" example domain in documentation, what about all the others that have all been reserved by the registry.