I've never seen this discussed here, so I'll make some noise.
When I do a `whois tucows.info`, I'm told that the registrar for that domain is R139-LRMS. I can `whois -h whois.afilias.net "ID R R139-LRMS"` to get contact details for that registrar, but the WHOIS out does not appear to include a URL for an HTTP reference. URLs for registrars are provided by Afilias *on their web site* at http://www.afilias.info/cgi-bin/registrar-id.cgi, but why the heck aren't they providing the same info in the WHOIS record? Is it just a silly oversight, like the fact that the CIRA whois server doesn't include expiry dates while the web site does? Anybody know if this is intentional? And what about DNS servers? Is there some *reason* that info domains have no DNS servers listed via whois (I mean, other than the obvious fact that Afilias isn't bound by Verisign's policies)? And ... here's another. A look at the root.zone file from verisign-grs points .info delegation to TLD[12].NOMINUM.COM. Who is Nominum, and what is their relation to Afilias? And ... TWO delegating name servers? Granted, they may be using some expensive load balancing goop to reduce the chances of an outage, but wouldn't it be wiser to put this stuff to more physical locations? Wasn't the idea to distribute things around the Internet, so that one bombed building wouldn't take down the whole ARPA... er, Internet? Am I missing something obvious? Hrm. Somebody remind me not to drink coffee at night. -- Paul Chvostek <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Operations / Development / Abuse / Whatever vox: +1 416 598-0000 IT Canada http://www.it.ca/
