Expiring and Deleting Domain Names: Nov 29, 2006

An Internet domain name is not available on its expiration date, but if it is not paid, the domain name will be deleted from the registry -- usually within 75 days. At that point, the domain name is again available to the public for registration. For valuable domain names, however, it's not likely that you will be able to simply register that domain name through standard registration procedures.

Domain back-order services put a lot of computing power behind hitting the registrars repeatedly in order to snatch a valuable domain name the moment it expires.