$ nslookup example.com Server: 10.1.1.1 Address: 10.1.1.1#53

Non-authoritative answer: Name: example.com Address: 93.184.216.119

$ whois 93.184.216.119 <snip>

  % Information related to '93.184.216.0 - 93.184.216.255'

  % Abuse contact for '93.184.216.0 - 93.184.216.255' is 'abuse@edgecast.com'

  inetnum:        93.184.216.0 - 93.184.216.255
  netname:        EDGECAST-NETBLK-03
  descr:          NETBLK-03-EU-93-184-216-0-24
  country:        EU
  admin-c:        DS7892-RIPE
  tech-c:         DS7892-RIPE
  status:         ASSIGNED PA
  mnt-by:         MNT-EDGECAST
  source:         RIPE # Filtered

  person:         Derrick Sawyer
  address:        2850 Ocean Park Blvd., Suite 200, Santa Monica CA 90405 USA
  phone:          +18773343236
  nic-hdl:        DS7892-RIPE
  source:         RIPE # Filtered
  mnt-by:         MNT-EDGECAST

That seems to be the person you'd want to ask.

I had two options:

1: Email them and ask for myself, and only myself.

2: See if I could cajole the admin out into the light for a potentially interesting public discussion.

Well you got my up-vote. ;)

The trouble is, the edgecast.com Content Distribution Network (CDN) is owned by Verizon. In theory, the `nslookup example.com` command should fail with NXDOMAIN (Non-eXisting Domain) error, but on some networks like Verizon, the bastards are actually resolving it even though the IETF and IANA specs say it should never resolve at all. For notes, Verizon does transparent redirection of DNS requests on their network so you actually can't use anything other than their DNS servers, but this case is just odd.

EDIT: I originally wrote `whois` rather than `nslookup` --heck, whois doesn't have that error code. It's early/late, and it seems hn user "vertex-four" below is right about the "example.com" domain always being registered to IANA, but as far as I remember, it should never resolve to an IP address. Need sleep.

> In theory, the `whois example.com` command should fail with NXDOMAIN (Non-eXisting Domain) error

Huh? No, it shouldn't. Example domains are, according to the RFC, permanently registered to IANA, although not through the "normal channels" (I suppose they don't have to pay for them).

example.com and other example domains resolve correctly wherever you are. They are not treated specially in any way (or shouldn't be, according to the RFC) aside from that they're permanently registered to IANA and that application developers should understand that they're example domains. The RFC does not prevent IANA from running any services on example domains, and they choose to run an HTTP server.

You're right about the "example.com" and similar domains always being registered to IANA, and I even did a brain-fade on whois/nslookup in my comment, but as far as I remember, the example domains are never supposed to resolve to an IP? I'll look at this again after I get some sleep.

They used not to resolve in the far past. Apparently they decided otherwise later.

Do it! I would love to know the answer to this as well. I bet there's a great story here.