Re: Registrar and registry backend processes.

[Lionel Elie Mamane]

On Mon, Jan 17, 2005 at 06:16:25PM -0800, davidb@panix.com wrote:
> P.S.

> can anyone comment on the reputations of the .net registry
> administration contenders (no need to comment on verisign)?

> A nonprofit firm in Frankfurt, Denic eG, which manages Germany's
> eight million registered .de domain names, has also indicated that
> it is planning to bid.

For what it is worth, some consider the .de whois server broken; see
below. Let's note that the new RFC (3912) doesn't mention the "help
methodology" anymore.

-------- Begin Quote --------

The .DE whois server is broken. I should be able to telnet to the
WHOIS server on the whois port, send it a domain, and get results. If
I do that, I get:

$ telnet whois.denic.de whois
Trying 81.91.162.7...
Connected to whois.denic.de.
Escape character is '^]'.
denic.de
domain:      denic.de
status:      connect

Connection closed by foreign host.

The only way to get "real" data out of the .DE whois server is to use
cryptic options:

$ telnet whois.denic.de whois
Trying 81.91.162.7...
Connected to whois.denic.de.
Escape character is '^]'.
-T dn,ace -C US-ASCII denic.de 
% Copyright (c)2004 by DENIC
% Version: 1.00.0
%
% Restricted rights.
[.... snip ....]


Further, these options are not documented anywhere, because the usual
"help" methodology, as documented by the RFC, doesn't work:

$ telnet whois.denic.de whois
Trying 81.91.162.7...
Connected to whois.denic.de.
Escape character is '^]'.
?
domain:      ?
status:      invalid

Connection closed by foreign host.

--
Lionel Elie Mamane