NSI Bulletin 098-010 | Update on Whois

Tue Sep 1 21:03:43 UTC 1998

Network Solutions has been seeing increased traffic on whois 
in the last few months.  The number of queries has approximately
doubled each month since June.  At this time, 40% of our inbound
http traffic is whois related.  In an attempt to alleviate some 
of the load on the servers, we have taken the following steps:

    - Some of the worst offenders (single site, large number of accesses) will 
be blocked from access starting this week
    - Replication of the whois data will be started earlier in the evening to 
allow for more timely updates
    - Existing whois hosts have had processor and memory upgrades
    - Local file storage is now being used vice NFS
    - Medium-term and long-term development efforts are underway to redesign 
whois for optimal performance.  This includes in-memory searches, better 
parsing and dynamic updates obviating the need for large daily data movements.

_____________________________________
David H. Holtzman (dholtz at internic.net)
Sr Vice President of Engineering
Network Solutions, Inc.