As I’ve mentioned on previous occassions, the IEDR has been making significant changes to their methodology over the last year or so.
Some of the changes are not evident to non-resellers and may not be of immediate interest to the general public.
One of the areas that has constantly come under criticism has been the quality of the WHOIS data. To date a whois lookup returned two possible values – registered or “no match”.
For example:
whois blacknight.ie outputs:
% Rights restricted by copyright; http://www.domainregistry.ie/copyright.html
% Do not remove this notice
domain: blacknight.ie
descr: Blacknight Internet Solutions Ltd
descr: Body Corporate (Ltd,PLC,Company)
descr: Corporate Name
admin-c: AAE553-IEDR
tech-c: AAM456-IEDR
nserver: ns.blacknightsolutions.com
nserver: ns2.blacknightsolutions.com
source: IEDR
person: Michele Neylon
nic-hdl: AAE553-IEDR
source: IEDR
person: Blacknight.ie Hostmaster
nic-hdl: AAM456-IEDR
source: IEDR
If I try another query:
whois mneylon.ie
% Rights restricted by copyright; http://www.domainregistry.ie/copyright.html
% Do not remove this notice
% THERE WAS NO MATCH IN THE IE DOMAIN REGISTRY DATABASE FOR YOUR QUERY.
% Note that this database only holds data related to IE domain names
% and associated contacts.
% Use http://www.domainregistry.ie/search/others.html for other NICs.
% The IE Domain Registry reserves the right to withhold access to this
% service at any time.
The problem with that output is that it does not prove that the domain is actually available for registration. All it means is that the domain is not in the live. The domain could easily be on the stalled list, or pending registration.
For some companies that may not be an issue, but since the advent of the IE domain deleted list we have had our own clients competing against each other for the same domain.
What is the solution?
The obvious one would be to modify the data output to reflect the real status of a domain.
The IEDR have now announced that they will change the output to not only provide the fundamental information, but will also include a whole lot more.
There will, in fact, be three different outputs to reflect the three possible statuses.
You’ll also be able to see the renewal date of the domains in the whois information for the very first time, thus rendering the entire process more transparent.
This will, of course, cause some headaches as well.
Most web-based whois lookup scripts or applications rely on a matching a particular string of text in the whois output. If the string is present it indicates that the domain is available for purchase. The new whois output does not contain the string that was previously present and whether or not the new strings will be sufficient is yet to be seen. I expect that there will be some unhappy companies out there once the change is implemented.
However, even if there are issues with the initial change it is still a very positive move and reflects the position of the current CEO of the IEDR, David Curtin. Curtin, who spoke at yesterday’s IIA Congress in Dublin, has made a number of significant changes to the registry’s modus operandi.
Over the last two years the registry has slowly, but surely, given its resellers a much higher level of control over their domain portfolio and this trend seems set to continue with discussions now being held on an API. An API would allow resellers, such as ourselves, to bring a much higher level of automation to our day to day interactions with the registry.
At present, for example, a client can order a .com via our site, or that of many other companies, and get it registered in minutes. Not only that, but the client is fully empowered in the day to day management of their domain. They do not need to contact or interact with anyone when they need to make a change to DNS or contact information. It’s all automated via application interfaces.
In a market, such as that of hosting, the reality demands that we deliver our services quickly and efficiently and in a cost-effective manner. A hosting service provider cannot afford to manually manage thousands of domain names and hosting accounts. Manual intervention costs money and if that cost is passed on to the client you lose them.
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