DNS question

[Neuromancer]

What is the "authorative" place/website to do a whois search on a domain name? Is it internic.net/whois ?

From my understanding, in terms of internet address/name/AS authority it goes:

1. ICANN

2. internic, apnic, ripe ncc, etc.

3. ISP's

Why are there hundreds of whois websites? Do they query different registries? Any clarification would be appreciated, I'm just trying to get a better understanding of how intenet-wide DNS works!

[Danilo Dy]

Hi,

For IP address and Autonomous System numbers, IANA allocate IP addresses and assign Autonomous System numbers from the pools of unallocated addresses/numbers to the RIRs or Regional Internet Registries according to their established needs. There are currently 5 RIRs, check their WHOIS link to query their databases;

1. ARIN (North American Region)

http://ws.arin.net/whois

2. RIPE-NCC(EU, ME, and CA)

http://www.ripe.net/whois

3. APNIC (Asia/Pacific Region)

http://wq.apnic.net/apnic-bin/whois.pl

4. LACNIC (Latin America and some Caribbean Islands)

http://www.lacnic.net/cgi-bin/lacnic/whois?lg=EN

5. AFRINIC (African Region).

http://www.afrinic.net/cgi-bin/whois

You can also use external WHOIS like http://member.dnsstuff.com/pages/tools.php to query RIRs databases.

For domain name you can use any domain name WHOIS like http://www.geektools.com/whois.php and also http://member.dnsstuff.com/pages/tools.php. There are thousands if not hundreds of WHOIS utilities in the internet, majority of them is for domain name.

The WHOIS information is never use for DNS, and is often misleading and inaccurate.

To look at DNS entries for domain names and reverse zone, you can use any available DNS query utility like http://member.dnsstuff.com/pages/tools.php

Regards,

Dandy

[Neuromancer]

Thanks for the info and links!

-Chris