Back in February when looking into the new Top Level Domains (TLDs) I came across the proposed remedy for the expected name collisions. One of the key recommendations made was providing a safe way to alert those who would need to resolve a potential future DNS collision.

It was proposed that the IP address 127.0.53.53 was to be used as

the primary objective is
to communicate with system administrators through their logs, this unique and
strange IP will hopefully be noticed and the administrator will search the Internet
for assistance. Making it known that new TLDs will behave in this fashion and
publicizing the flag IP (along with self-help materials) will help administrators
isolate the problem more quickly than just using the common 127.0.0.1.

8 months later it’s interesting to have a look if this has worked. So what does happen when someone searches for “127.0.53.53”.

Google Search '127.0.53.53'

There is relevant information from sites which most administrators will be aware of including ICANN, Server Fault, Stack Overflow and Microsoft Technet. Seemed to have been a success story in using ‘User Generated Content’ in a campaign.