Hello Robert,
Thursday, September 14, 2000, 3:32:30 PM, you wrote:
> Looking at a newly registered domain name, where will it appear first?
> in the A-ROOT zone file, or in the whois database? or the other way around.
For a newly registered domain, it will appear in opensrs's whois
instantly. However, it may appear in the gTLD-servers before it appears
in the whois.internic.net whois, which is updated at a different time
than the gtld zone files. Or it may appear in the whois server first.
There is really no set formula for this. It is all a question of
timing.
> conversley, when a domain is expired, where will it drop from first. The
> A-ROOT zone file, or the whois server.
It will always drop from the gTLD zone file before it will drop from
the whois. It could stay in the whois for quite some time, depending
on the registrar. When a domain is removed from the NSI Registrar
whois, it is on the 5 day hold at whois.internic.net where it shows up
in their whois, is not in the zone files, and is not available for
registration. At the end of the hold there is still a period of time
when the domain will be available for registration, AND still appear
in the whois.internic.net database.
> This could explain why sometimes when one tries to register a domain, the
> whois server says it ok, but when you try to reserve it, back comes a
> message saying its taken?
One should never use a whois server to determine domain availability
in real time. Many registrars do not maintain real time whois, and
the whois.internic.net database is also not real time. Also, just
because a domain is in the whois.internic.net database doesn't mean it
isn't available, as noted above, it can be in the whois and be
available for registration. In my experience, most valuable domains
that expire (include almost all 2-3 letter domains) remain available
for no more than 5 minutes from the registry drop. Sometimes this is
measured in seconds, depending on the domain and the people who
realize it is coming up for availability. Some domain registration
jumpers are better than others :)
--
Best regards,
William mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
