NSI Bulletin 098-010 | Update on Whois

Tue Sep 1 21:21:46 UTC 1998


> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-nanog at merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog at merit.edu]On Behalf Of
> David H. Holtzman
> Sent: Tuesday, September 01, 1998 5:04 PM
> To: NANOG
> Subject: NSI Bulletin 098-010 | Update on Whois
>
>
>
> 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
This seems totally inappropriate.
>     - 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.
>
Why don't you just allow ftp access to the whois database, and let others
serve up the data?

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

Cheers,
Alan