Getting WHOIS Server Address Directly from Registry

Home / Blogs

Getting WHOIS Server Address Directly from Registry

	By Jay Daley Posting here in a personal capacity
	April 17, 2007 Views: 31,705 Comments: 5

If you want to find out the WHOIS server for a particular TLD then in many cases you can do it with a simple DNS lookup. Just query for an SRV record for the domain _nicname._tcp.tld, like this:

~ jay$ dig +short _nicname._tcp.uk srv
0 0 43 whois.nic.uk.

The answer tells you that the WHOIS server for .uk is on port 43 (as it should be) of the server whois.nic.uk.

Many other TLDs follow this convention including .au .at .dk .fr .de .hu .ie .li .lu .nl .no .re .si .se and .ch. This list has now expanded to include .us and .biz and other registries are actively considering it. Of course for gTLDs with distributed WHOIS services there may be some problems to be overcome.

However, I hope developers pick up on this and start building it into their code. At the moment most developers tend to use a service like whois-servers.net, but this mechanism means they can get the WHOIS server address directly from the registry and so users should get a better experience.

By Jay Daley, Posting here in a personal capacity

Filed Under

Comments

Michele Neylon – Apr 20, 2007 12:31 PM

It would help if more of the ccTLDs provided some form of CLIbased whois or at least a DAS check.

# 1 Reply | Link | Report Problems

Paul Hoffman – Apr 22, 2007 2:55 PM

For those of us who use command-line interfaced, the “jwhois” package is a nice transparaent interface to all of the whois services. See the jwhois page for more info.

# 2 Reply | Link | Report Problems

Michele Neylon – Apr 22, 2007 2:57 PM

Unfortunately jwhois does not work with a lot of the ccTLDs - I’ve been trying it :)

# 3 Reply | Link | Report Problems

Paul Hoffman – Apr 22, 2007 3:16 PM

I haven’t had that problem. I’m sure that the person at

would appreciate knowing which TLDs are not working.

# 4 Reply | Link | Report Problems

Paul Hoffman – Apr 22, 2007 3:18 PM

(Trying that again…)

I haven’t had that problem. I’m sure that the person at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) would appreciate knowing which TLDs are not working.

# 5 Reply | Link | Report Problems

The Weekly Wrap

More and more professionals are choosing to publish critical posts on CircleID from all corners of the Internet industry. If you find it hard to keep up daily, consider subscribing to our weekly digest. We will provide you a convenient summary report once a week sent directly to your inbox. It's a quick and easy read.

I make a point of reading CircleID. There is no getting around the utility of knowing what thoughtful people are thinking and saying about our industry.

VINTON CERF
Co-designer of the TCP/IP Protocols & the Architecture of the Internet