@Home Domains Go On Auction Block

At its height, @Home was an Internet darling. One of the first large scale high-speed Internet services, it controlled 45 percent of broadband connections at the beginning of the decade.

The company's January 1999 merger with search engine and Web portal Excite was thought to ensure cable Internet's dominance over phone-line based DSL, and would ensure Excite's success well into the next decade.

However, corporate infighting and the collapse of the Internet economy took the high-flying company down hard. Clashes between @Home and Excite executives caused the company to lose focus, and soon it was reflected in service outages and slowdowns that angered subscribers.

Soon, the cable partners began to bail out, causing the company to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and eventually collapse in 2002, leaving years of lawsuits from creditors and many wondering how a company that showed so much promise could fall so quickly.

Fast-forward to 2005. Now, the controlling interest in the assets of the company, At Home Liquidating Trust, plans to sell some 119 domain names the company had amassed during its operation.

Moniker.com on Wednesday announced that it would be handling the domain name sales for the company. "There are several valuable domain names in the portfolio. Short Names like stuff.com and home.net will be highly prized assets in the sale," CEO Monte Cahn said in a statement.

Cahn estimates the value of the domains at over $1 million altogether.

Already, at least one domain has been sold for $285,000 -- shoppingcart.com to e-commerce site MonsterCommerce. Other domains available include Stuff.com, Home.net, Mystuff.com and Firstyears.com according to Moniker.

According to reports, upon the completion of the domain sale, most of the rest of Excite@Home's intellectual property will likely be auctioned next if creditors of the company agree to put it up for sale.