[per request of jhawk, moved to tech-userlevel]

On Tue, 19 Sep 2000, John Hawkinson wrote:

: > > This changes the Network Solutions server to whois.opensrs.net, to avoid
: > > Netsol's self-advertising bull!@*# and add _some_ recursion capability
: > > (OpenSRS will do a recursion automatically for all registries).

: I don't think this is a good idea. Choosing one, non-standard registrar
: for a database that's administered by Netsol. Sucky as they may be, I don't
: think this change is appropriate.

The prior server, whois.networksolutions.com is not "standard" either.

In case you missed it, domain names were deregulated a while ago.  Netsol
doesn't "own" the ./.COM/.ORG/.NET registry anymore, even if they currently
host the root name server database.  ICANN now controls the flow of that
information.  However, ICANN offers only rwhois service, so a regular whois
client, which does not understand the rwhois protocol, won't be able to do
anything useful with it.

If we want a "standard" whois server, until such time that our whois is a
bit smarter, it must be whois.internic.net, with no exceptions.  We cannot
use whois.networksolutions.com in that case either.  The drawback here is
that whois.internic.net provides no way to recurse to the appropriate whois
server automatically.

Blame Erik Fair for starting it, if you wish:  he changed it from
whois.internic.net to whois.networksolutions.com before the 1.5 branch.
(Cynical grin notwithstanding.  8^)

-- 
-- Todd Vierling <tv@wasabisystems.com>  *  http://www.wasabisystems.com/
-- Speed, stability, security, and support.  Wasabi NetBSD:  Run with it.