Self-referential whois queries

Thu Feb 10 20:17:59 UTC 2011

On Thu, 10 Feb 2011 17:27:26 -0200
Rubens Kuhl <rubensk at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm noticing an increase in getting "query rate exceeded" at whois
> services that might be connected to a symptom described by ARIN at
> NANOG 48/ARIN XXV and ARIN XXVI where machines ask for the whois
> record of their own IP address.
>
> Are there any clues of what is causing this ?

Some spam bots do these automated self-referential queries, but if you
are seeing those rate exceeded messages when you perform queries from
your client, you may simply be probably bumping up against a limit for
the source host or network in question.

John