.ORG Registrar ID List (was: Stupid .org registry code change)

Tue Dec 23 05:34:39 UTC 2003

Bruce Beckwith wrote:

>You should deal with a registrar for this information, since that is one
>of the services they can provide for you.
>  
>
Right, but in a case where my client inherited a domain from their 
predecessor, and has no idea who their registrar is, I seem to be in a 
catch-22.... This was my purpose in issuing a whois query to begin with- 
to learn which registrar they need to contact to make DNS authority changes.

OTOH, if you are suggesting that I should contact *my* registrar of 
choice to obtain this information... this seems more than a little 
ridiculous (to me at least, and I suspect OpenSRS is not going to 
appreciate getting a new support ticket every time I want to do a whois 
to figure out what other registrar has a domain that my client doesn't 
even intend to transfer to them).

Why should I {e-mail|call} to get what used to be available with a 
simple whois query? What have we gained by making this process even more 
complicated? I have no beef with the use of Registrar IDs, I'm sure 
there are benefits to using them. But I do think that they are a poor 
substitute for what used to be human-readable information.

>If you are interested in the cross-reference list, please see
>http://www.pir.org/whois_search/registrar_whois_ids, which can be
>accessed via the link at http://www.pir.org/whois_search/.
>
>In addition, if you choose to use the web-based whois, then you can use
>the link on the whois output for the registrar - so for example, the
>domain nanog.org is at
>http://www.pir.org/cgi-bin/whois.cgi?yes_popup_flag=0&whois_query_field=
>domain+NANOG.ORG, and using the link for Sponsoring Registrar, in this
>example "NSI(R63-LROR)" will give information on how to reach the
>registrar - see
>http://www.pir.org/cgi-bin/whois.cgi?yes_popup_flag=0&whois_query_field=
>registrar+id+R63-LROR.
>  
>
Thanks, but again this seems unnecessarily complicated. Why can't your 
whois server do this for me as .com/.net are, and .org used to be?

I.E.
$ whois rockynet.com

Whois Server Version 1.3

Domain names in the .com and .net domains can now be registered
with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net
for detailed information.

   Domain Name: ROCKYNET.COM
   Registrar: TUCOWS, INC. <- This is all I really need
   Whois Server: whois.opensrs.net <- but this is helpful too
   Referral URL: http://www.opensrs.org <- this is icing on the cake :)

At the very least, I think it's only reasonable for the pir.org whois 
server to provide some basic help text on where to get more information, 
i.e. as Tim Wilde pointed out: For more information do a 'whois -h 
whois.pir.org "registrar id r11-lror"'

If I knew a bit more C, I'd hack my copy of whois to do this for me 
automagically. For now I guess I'll live with having to do two whois 
queries to get the information I need (I'm stubborn and would rather not 
use the web-based whois, since I'm already in the shell for the 
corresponding digs and named configuration- that's what I liked about 
whois, it was a nice general purpose tool that could tell me certain 
things about any domain with one simple query).

Mike