IANA's email about why example.com changed | Oliver Dunk

2 days ago by lemmydividebyzero to c/technology

I emailed IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) earlier today to ask about the new content on example.com. To my surprise, their VP replied. Here is the email: I am happy to try and answer any questions you have. The changes we make to the site from time-to-time are usually informed by a desire to either reduce the overall bandwidth demands of serving the site, or improve its utility. At its heart it is a placeholder...
coolmojo 19 points 2 days ago

In my opinion example.com should just return HTTP 418 I'm a teapot status response code.

path: 0 26261408, hotness: undefined, score: 19, children: 1
NotSteve_ 5 points 2 days ago

That'd confuse the hell out of me if i missed a single config line when updating defaults. Maybe we could have a "you didn't update all the defaults ya dummy" status code that only example.com uses

path: 0 26261408 26265843, hotness: undefined, score: 5, children: 0
dan 5 points 2 days ago

I'm very curious about how much bandwidth it consumes. Even with the small amount of content, I wouldn't be surprised if it's over 1Gbps.

path: 0 26260553, hotness: undefined, score: 5, children: 3
IsoKiero 7 points 2 days ago

I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s over 1Gbps.

The site is about 2kB. In order to consume 1Gbps it would need about 62 000 visitors every second, assuming no one uses any kind of cache or anything. Or 5,4 billion visitors daily. Not impossible, but I'd guess the real number isn't quite that much.

path: 0 26260553 26262769, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 1
dan 3 points 2 days ago

I was thinking more about automated usage. There's probably a lot of devices that hit it to check for internet connectivity. The linked article says that most of the traffic is automated and they saved bandwidth by putting some content in a JS file (since most of the automated hits don't download or run the JS).

path: 0 26260553 26262769 26267188, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 0
rozodru 3 points 2 days ago

probably a hell of a lot. I do a lot of travelling for work and thus I'm always connecting to open wifi spots (with a vpn naturally) and many times my browser won't pick up the capture portal automatically so I use example.com or neverssl.com to trigger the capture portal. It's also the site I use to a very quick/dirty internet test.

I imagine most people use it the same way.

path: 0 26260553 26261644, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 0
Skullgrid 5 points 2 days ago

This is the second time I've hit things about example.com

When I am going to test an email sender soon, what domain should I friggin use for the test addresses? I want the mails I use for fake test data to not link back to me personally, unless I am specifically looking to receive and look at said mail.

path: 0 26270364, hotness: undefined, score: 5, children: 5
BetterDev 8 points 2 days ago

I use something like user@invalid

Or user@domain.invalid

invalid a reserved TLD meant for basically this exact use-case.

See RFC 2606

path: 0 26270364 26270616, hotness: undefined, score: 8, children: 4
Skullgrid 4 points 2 days ago

Time to reset the dB again

path: 0 26270364 26270616 26270877, hotness: undefined, score: 4, children: 0
BetterDev 1 point 2 days ago

test would work too

path: 0 26270364 26270616 26270631, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0
Skullgrid 1 point 2 days ago path: 0 26270364 26270616 26272036, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 1
MummifiedClient5000 3 points a day ago

It will fail immediately, so that's fine.

$ host -t mx example.com
example.com mail is handled by 0 .
path: 0 26270364 26270616 26272036 26276405, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 0
GraveyardOrbit -11 points 2 days ago
path: 0 26263391, hotness: undefined, score: -11, children: 6
milliams 10 points 2 days ago

I was going to be rude, but I thought I'd just do you the courtesy and paste the relevant section from the article:

As it tends to be heavily trafficked, the overall bandwidth is a key consideration, and to that end one of the changes we made this week was to split the page content into a more basic page, augmented by a separate Javascript file with additional content beyond that. Since most of the traffic to the site is automated it tends not to fetch the Javascript file, reducing overall data requirements.

They're using JS to reduce the load.

path: 0 26263391 26263547, hotness: undefined, score: 10, children: 5
urushitan 2 points 2 days ago

Yeah specifically the JS holds translated versions of the sentence "This domain is for use in documentation examples without needing permission. This is not a service; avoid relying on it for testing and monitoring purposes." The raw HTML returns just that + CSS. The JS injects translations of that sentence in multiple languages

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GraveyardOrbit -1 points 2 days ago
path: 0 26263391 26263547 26263613 26266288, hotness: undefined, score: -1, children: 2
urushitan 3 points 2 days ago

Thanks, when I go back to work at the IANA on Monday I’ll take care of it

path: 0 26263391 26263547 26263613 26266288 26267223, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 0
psion1369 1 point 2 days ago

So basically what is happening now. The JS allows it to happen on the client side, taking a HUGE load off the server trying to parse the ua string, find the right translation, bring up the file, and respond. They probably have a single binary that has the HTML, CSS, and JS all compiled in and update it once every year.

path: 0 26263391 26263547 26263613 26266288 26271092, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0
GraveyardOrbit 2 points 2 days ago
path: 0 26263391 26263547 26266144, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 0
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