John,
Whois works perfectly fine if you use it for what its designed for. The
problem is that you are trying to use it for something it was never
designed for.
Whois is a contact database. It is designed to look up contact
information for various domain related items (domain names, nameserver
hosts, IP addresses, etc). Whois does not need to be updated in real
time, but it would be nice if it was (some entities do update their whois
in real time but the majority do not).
Whois is not nor has it ever been a domain availability lookup tool. To
look up domain availability you should use the domain check function of
the RRP. It will return a real-time answer of "available" or "taken" for
the gTLDs under Verisign Registry control. Other registries should have
similar domain availability query tools for TLDs that they are responsible
for.
On Sun, 1 Jul 2001, John Blakney wrote:
> I have tried registering a .com name and had it fail, then checked on some
> names that were registered a couple of days ago and Whois shows them as
> available but the whois database has a last update of 6/28/01. That would be
> a big problem. The names are correct in the root servers however so I know
> they have been properly registered.
>
> It isn't just at OpenSRS, the whois fails at internic reports:
>
> Whois Server Version 1.3
>
> Domain names in the .com, .net, and .org domains can now be registered
> with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net
> for detailed information.
>
> No match for domain "<snip>.COM".
>
> >>> Last update of whois database: Thu, 28 Jun 2001 02:04:50 EDT <<<
>
> This was returned at Sun, 01 Jul 2001 00:24:00 EDT.
> Same result on Sun, 01 Jul 2001 13:15:00 EDT.
>
> My hunch is that if the internic whois is failing, new registrations should
> be impossible.
>
> John
> ---
> John Blakney <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Visual Database Systems / Little Rock
> (501) 376-2091
>
>
