This is a well covered topic.
Since the deregulation of the gTLD namespace, the root registry had to
create a 'distributed' whois mechanism. Each Registrar was responsible
for running their own whois, so a 'root' whois server was setup to be
responsible for informing end users which Registrar was responsible for
which domain. This 'root' whois server is whois.crsnic.net
Our whois does two queries. It will first query the 'root' whois server
to determine which Registrar is responsible for a domain - then it
attempts to query the Registrar's whois server. For example:
$ whois -h whois.crsnic.net domain.com
Domain Name: DOMAIN.COM
Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, INC.
Whois Server: whois.networksolutions.com
<other information removed...>
The whois server also reports nameservers for the domain in question (as
the root registry is responsible for nameserver "glue"), and you can also
query nameserver host information (by hostname or IP) to see which
registrar is responsible for a registered host.
Basically - there's no "better" whois to query. If you want to most up to
date information on a particular domain, you should query to Registrar
responsible for that domain - and you can obtain who's responsible from
whois.crsnic.net
Charles Daminato
TUCOWS Product Manager (ccTLDs)
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Sun, 19 Nov 2000, Florian Effenberger wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Which WHOIS server does OpenSRS query for checking a domains
> availability? If I query rs.internic.net, it is only reloaded once per
> day... is there a "better" server or do you query NetSol, CoreNIC, ...
> in a row?
>
> Thanks!
>
> -- Florian
>
>
>
