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I'm interested in getting access to a full WHOIS database in order to expand on a domain-profile project I'm working on. I know ARIN provides this database only to non-commercial researchers and every WHOIS provider I know of (including ARIN itself) has rate-limiting.

I also know, however, some commercial services that already exist (like the registrant lookup section of domaintools.com, which can search for domains by registrant name) which are impossible unless the site has direct access to a cached copy of the WHOIS database.

Any idea how they got ahold of their data?

MarathonStudios
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1 Answers1

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There is no publicly known single complete "WHOIS database", if you mean it.

  • ICANN organizes and keeps information about which registry is responsible for each top level domain and which registrars are entitled for which tlds (e.g. com, net, co.uk, ...).

  • Registries (e.g. Verisign, national registries, ...) keep the general availability information for domains of their allotted tlds. Some generic and country tld registries keep detailed whois information too, as the registrar system has not yet been (or will not be) fully developed for them.

  • And finally, registrars (GoDaddy, Enom, country code registrars where applicable, ...) have the detailed whois information about the domains registered through them.

So which one of these do you need?

For example Verisign, the biggest registry who is responsible for com/net/... has no rate limit AFAIK, or at least I've never encountered it up to ~40k queries/day.

Halil Özgür
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  • Probably the verisign, a I don't really need info on the other smaller TLDs. I heard others claim there was a pretty low rate limit - were you directly querying the whois server? – MarathonStudios Dec 19 '10 at 23:24
  • Yes, I'm directly querying the Verisign whois server. It provides availability, dates and name servers information and such. If you want the registrant information though, you have to contact registrar whois servers, which are sometimes rate limited or information limited (e.g. Godaddy). – Halil Özgür Dec 21 '10 at 09:22
  • Verisign supply an ftp-download of DNS Zone files: "Apply for TLD Zone File Access for .name To be considered for access to the zone file(s) for .name, please complete the .name Zone File Access Request Form and email it to tldzone@verisign-grs.com. https://www.verisign.com/en_US/channel-resources/domain-registry-products/zone-file/index.xhtml – jmullee Oct 27 '20 at 13:37