Whois Server List
 

Hi,

I recently found out how to use the "whois" command in Perl to extract information about a domain. But I have some doubts:

1)The whois servers list is updated how often in a regular server? And where is it? What's it name?

2) Where can I find the most recent and updated whois servers file?

Kind regards,

Rigel_Kent

whois is a command (doesn't require perl) to find out who owns a domain in DNS.

Basically it uses your resolve.conf to determine what to query (if you're on a DNS server resolve.conf should query 127.0.0.1 the localhost). The DNS server specified if running BIND will have an entry in its named.conf for "hint" which lets it know what the root servers are. The root servers are the ones that have top level domains (com, org, gov etc...). These servers then query DNS Registrars (Network Solutions, GKG.Net, GoDaddy.com etc...) to see who is registered for the domain you queried (yahoo.com, google.com etc...). The Registrar then returns the information about the domain .

Depending on your organization there may be referrals. For example we have Windows DNS servers for internal name resolution but if one asks for an internet name those servers will refer to our Linux DNS servers to get the records.