Reminder that the only safe dummy domains to use are:
example.com
example.net
example.org
And nowadays there's also a safe dummy TLD: .example
These are safe because they are reserved by IANA as as special-use domain names for documentation purposes on direction of IETF in RFC 2606 and RFC 6761.
Any other domain can be registered and as such should never be used as a dummy domain for documentation or as eg. an example in default configs.
@pascal@briankrebs Both .invalid and .test are reserved as well, true, but .invalid is by definition always an invalid domain name and .test should only be used to test the DNS system, hence not included.
For documentation purposes and other generic uses of a dummy domain the example ones should be preferred
@baloo@pascal@briankrebs With that way of thinking you could also use any random unavailable TLD. You can never guarantee that a domain on such a TLD will never ever be registered in the future, as eg .zip and .dev has shown
Also: It’s very unlikely that Google will shut down a TLD. One can not easily simply just shut them down. Ask the Soviet Union about how the retirement of .su is going…
Also: Is Google still the owner of .zip or it transferred to Squarespace along with Google Domains?
No google domains and google TLD are two different entities.
By ICANN regulations, a single company can't be both a registry and a registrar. Google domains was the registrar, Charleston Road Registry is the registry.
@voxpelli@baloo@pascal@briankrebs Verisign bought NSI to be then both registry and registrar, and then sold back the registrar part as NetworkSolutions. So this happens from time to time, and business wise can be easily understood by the fact that all money is to be made at the registry level and not so much at the registrar level (for a pure domain name registrar, something that doesn't exist anymore, as all entities sell other products).
@voxpelli It is also worth to mention that IPv4 documentation network blocks are 192.0.2.0/24, 198.51.100.0/24, and 203.0.113.0/24. IPv6 documentation network block is 2001:DB8::/32. See RFC 5737 and RFC 3849
@voxpelli As the former owner of somewhere.com, I seriously endorse this statement. Like really endorse it. Shortly before I sold the domain I was bouncing 2.5 million email messages a day.
And trust me, you did not want to have the addresses “overtherainbow” or “someone” or “wormalert” (that’s another story).
@voxpelli
example.edu technically isn't an IANA-reserved domain, because .edu is a sponsored TLD. Ironically, ICANN is probably paying a $77/yr renewal fee for the domain.
@voxpelli Back in the early days of the web, a designer built a web site for a customer. Since all of the links weren't determined yet, she filled many of them in with "xxx" has a placeholder.
The customer, testing the prototype, clicked on one of the placeholder links. The browser of the era (probably IE 5) helpfully converted "xxx" to "xxx[.]com".
@voxpelli So what domain do I put in the hole here in this documentation example snippet:
“Don't use real domains in documentation, but use the official example domains. For example, don't write ‘Type ping _ to test connectivity’ but write ‘Type ping example.com to test connectivity’.”
@nomeata When telling someone to do something, never give them an example of what not to do, as they may remember that rather than than your suggestion 😜
@voxpelli See also: Google acquiring .dev and building Chrome to explicitly ignore your system's DNS settings and /etc/hosts lookup.
That… is part of why I refuse to use Chrome. I will not have my DNS or other network traffic hijacked by an advertising company known to share data with third-parties.
@voxpelli how about example.invalid and example.test?
for those who are new to this, .invalid and .test are reserved domains, meaning that no one can purchase a domain with those domain name extensions
@moonwalker Those two reserved TLD:s are meant to indicate invalid domains and to test the DNS system though and should not be used for anything else, hence not relevant to list.
The TLD people should use as a dummy domain is .example
@avirr Yeah, same here, and when @utochin reminded me that not everyone have figured it out yet (which is quite obvious of course) that made me want to share it so that even more people could feel that relief and - um - a few more people than I anticipated felt a relief and wanted to boost 😅
@voxpelli Yes please. Microsoft still uses my domain name in their hosts.txt file because decades ago they didn't know about RFC2606 and they are too stubborn to fix it.
The “example.edu” appears to be in the same league as “example.se” and others – a class of second
level domains that a TLD owner itself has voluntarily chosen to reserve for documentation purposes, which is different from the other three which are directed by IETF.
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