Domain Name Tutorials

What is WHOIS? WHOIS is an important resource when talking about domain name registration. This tutorial on WHOIS is going to discuss the role of WHOIS and how WHOIS affects domain names. So just what is WHOIS? Keep on reading to finding out!

What is WHOIS? WHOIS is a query/response protocol that is used daily for querying databases in order to determine the registrant or assignee of Internet resources, such as a domain name, an IP address block, or an autonomous system number. WHOIS is very popular when people are looking to buy existing domain names and need to know who to contact. WHOIS pronounced as two words; who is!

What is the history of WHOIS? When the Internet was young and just starting to show up there was only one organization that handled all domain registrations. That organization was DARPA; Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The process of domain name registration was established in RFC 920. RFC 920 talks about the purpose of domain names and how they will be registered.

Shortly after the Internet began to take off WHOIS was created with several key tasks. The entire purpose of WHOIS was to give people the ability to look-up domain name registration and find out specific information about the owner. Because all registration was done by one organization in that time, one centralized server was used for WHOIS queries. This made looking-up such information very easy.

In the very beginning of WHOIS, WHOIS allowed searches that were called wild card searches. These searches would allow a person to do a WHOIS lookup on very broad words and get a ton of information. Some of the most popular wild card searches were the following:

• When a person would enter another person's last name and get all the individual people who had that name.
• When a person would do a search on a keyword and see all registered domains containing that keyword.
• When a person would search for a specific administrative contact and see all domains they were associated with.

Wild card searches are not longer allowed because one of key reason: SPAM. If wild card searches were still available spammers could go do these searches and spam everybody that has is affiliated with a domain name.

What information can you get from WHOIS?

When a person registers a domain name they are required to provide personal information that consists of name, address, phone number, and email address. This information is typically public record so anybody that uses WHOIS can find this information. The information that you get from WHOIS can be very useful if used for the right reasons. A lot of times the best cheap domain names are already taken so you might use WHOIS to find out who has a domain name that you want. You can then contact that person to see if they want to sell the domain name to you.

As we mentioned above the information that is supplied when you register a domain name is public record. For that reason, a lot of people who register a domain name provide false information. They don’t want their personal information to be public record. You need to think about this when contacting people via WHOIS searches. Another way to prevent your personal information from being public records is to list your domain name as a private listing. When a person pays to have their domain name listed as a private registration, the information for the registrar, rather than the registrant, is shown in WHOIS searches. So for instance if you use GoDaddy to register your domain name and select private registration, GoDaddy will show up in the WHOIS searches. What a lot of people don’t realize when they do this is that technically the registrar is the official holder of the domain. This could be a problem down the road if domain name registrars starting enforcing this.

Overall, WHOIS is a great resource when it comes to domain name registration. When used for the right reasons it is gold, when used for the wrong reasons it is a huge mistake!

GoDaddy

NetSol

Dotster