IANA Split example.com Into a Bare Page and a Script to Cut Bot Bandwidth

IANA changed example.com so that the page's fuller content loads from a separate JavaScript file, and Kim Davies, a vice president at the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, says the reason is bandwidth. Developer Oliver Dunk published Davies's reply on Sept. 30, 2026, with Davies's permission to share it.

The mechanism is simple and aimed at robots. Davies wrote that IANA split the content into "a more basic page, augmented by a separate Javascript file with additional content." Because most traffic to the domain is automated and does not fetch the script, each such request now costs less to serve.

What the page says now

The Terminal fetched example.com and read a heading, "Example Domain", followed by this text: "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." A link labelled "Learn more" points to iana.org/help/example-domains. The fetch showed no script reference in the text it returned, so The Terminal could not see the file Davies describes.

Dunk's post contains no bandwidth figures and no list of what broke. The reply, as Dunk reproduces it, gives none either.

What Davies said the domain is for

Davies describes the host as "a placeholder for a site no-one should be accessing." He wrote that some incidental traffic comes from people who copy a sample configuration and forget to replace the example domain. He also wrote that "There is no requirement there is a HTTP service present on the host in order to fulfill its purpose," and that IANA runs the web service as a courtesy.

IANA has said the same in public. A Sept. 4, 2024 notice announced that example.com, example.net, example.org and example.edu would answer POST, PUT, DELETE and PATCH requests with a 405 Method Not Allowed response. IANA wrote that the sites exist for documentation, not as testing endpoints, and that developers sometimes reach them "through copying configurations from sample documentation."

Date	Change	Who it breaks
Sept. 4, 2024	POST, PUT, DELETE and PATCH return 405	Test suites that write to the domain
By Sept. 30, 2026	Basic page plus separate JavaScript file	Probes that expect the full page in one fetch

The right-hand column is The Terminal's reading of the two changes, not an IANA list. The 2024 notice also said the service runs on a best-effort basis, that its behaviour may change without notice, and that the domains are kept under RFC 2606 and RFC 6761 for illustrative examples.

What a test suite should do instead

The practical consequence is for anyone whose continuous integration pipeline fetches example.com to confirm the network works, or whose uptime monitor treats a 200 from it as proof of connectivity. Both uses are the ones the page text now warns against, and IANA has been moving the host away from them in steps.

A test that only needs a URL string loses nothing. A test that needs a server should point at one the team runs, because Davies's wording means IANA could take the HTTP service down without breaking the domain's purpose.

Tooling that reports on the page, such as link checkers and title scrapers, is the other group exposed. A client that does not run JavaScript will see the bare version, and Davies says that is the intended outcome for automated traffic.

Elsewhere, Microsoft shipped WSL containers 1.0 without Compose, and Debian took rsync 3.5.0 whole rather than backport 33 fixes. IANA has not published a date for any further change to the example domains.