Registrar and registry backend processes.

Tue Jan 18 11:27:03 UTC 2005

On Tue, 18 Jan 2005, Elmar K. Bins wrote:

> > > 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.
> 
> And some call this not broken but necessary. I can explain off-list,
> if you like.

Why off-list? Just tell that you want to support multi-lingual domain names.

> > Further, these options are not documented anywhere, because the usual
> > "help" methodology, as documented by the RFC, doesn't work:
> 
> http://www.denic.de/en/domains/technik/denic_whois-server/index.html
> 
> (Easily found by searching for "whois", first hit - yes, I know, it's ugly,
> but you're still not telling the truth which is my point here)

I believe he meant that URL should be presented as part of normal whois 
answer. While me and others who "care" have already found it long ago,
you can't expect that of people who might do one denic lookup per year

> > $ telnet whois.denic.de whois
> > Trying 81.91.162.7...
> > Connected to whois.denic.de.
> > Escape character is '^]'.
> > ?
> > domain:      ?
> > status:      invalid
> 
> Which is defined in what RfC?
> If it is, I will gladly tell the folks to implement it.

? should produce documentation on how to use your whois server and what 
options it supports. However I've not seen many implement it and it
and in fact recent RFC3912 on whois does not even mention it any more.

But please don't take it that you should not implement it, if its no
big deal (and for most its not), then please present text-only copy
of documentation for most important options. And in general because
most people do not even know about "?", please just present URL to 
documentation in all other queries.

-- 
William Leibzon
Elan Networks
william at elan.net