whois and basic DNS

Brad Knowles brad.knowles at skynet.be
Mon Jul 2 18:31:08 UTC 2001


At 4:07 PM +0000 7/2/01, Sam Adams wrote:

>  1.  how do I know ascertain a domain name like foo.com
>      hasn't been assigned? if "whois foo.com" doesn't
>      return any hit, will that do?

	No, it won't.  The problem is much more complex than this, which 
is why a whole host of companies have sprung up for the sole purpose 
of trying to automate this process and make it as easy as possible, 
so long as you're willing to pay them a fee (some may also require 
that you host the domain through their servers).

>  2.  whois lookup of a domain using the Network Solutions web
>      interface returns far more info than the Unix whois
>      (Solaris 2.6 /bin/whois the.domain). does this mean
>      the Unix cmdline whois didn't ask for whois svr for
>      a more verbose output or it's not parsing it or it
>      is somewhat out dated?

	Different options are being passed somewhere, perhaps including 
to a different server altogether.  To know for sure, you'd have to 
have someone who was inside Network Solutions tell you how they had 
implemented the web interface, which is highly unlikely -- I'm sure 
that they consider this to be part of their competitive advantage.

>  3.  suppose foo.com is not assigned to anyone so I registered
>      it from one of those registrars that's capable of
>      .com domain. Does that guarantee that I also own
>      the possible subdomains ftp.foo.com, www.foo.com,
>      mail.foo.com etc in the future? I understand sometimes
>      a subdomain like www.foo.com may be just an alias of
>      foo.com.

	Yes, if you are the rightful owner of example.com, then you own 
everything under example.com, or you can delegate that 
ownership/authority for some subdomain of example.com to someone else.

>  4.  now, I own the domain foo.com. and I have one or a few
>      IP addresses from my ISP, assume non DHCP adresses for
>      simplicity.  I have at least two options:
>          4.1 run my own DNS server
>          4.2 have my ISP handle the
>
>      For 4.1, I can set up Bind, have the parent domain
>      .com delegate foo.com to my own name server ns.foo.com
>      and request my ISP to let me handle the inverse IP addr
>      translation

	Right.

>      For 4.2, I am not sure. will they be able to do *.foo.com
>      DNS transaltions for me even though they are mediaone.net
>      or rr.com.  Or I can only get a subdomain under theirs
>      such as         sub_myself.myisp.net and go from there?

	They almost certainly would be unwilling to manage this process 
for you, although there are plenty of companies out there that would 
be willing to do so -- for a fee.

>  Or, I am totally messed up and should go read a book? Thanks.

	I'd suggest that you start by reading 4th edition of _DNS and 
BIND_ by Paul Albitz and Cricket Liu, published by O'Reilly & Assoc. 
Do not settle for 3rd edtion, which may still be on the shelves.

	You may then want to follow that up with _The Domain Name 
Handbook: High Stakes and Strategies in Cyberspace_ by Ellen Rony and 
Peter Rony, published by R & D Books.  You can buy both of these 
books (and more) through the DNS Resources Directory page at 
<http://www.dns.net/dnsrd/books.html>.

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad.knowles at skynet.be>

/*        efdtt.c  Author:  Charles M. Hannum <root at ihack.net>          */
/*       Represented as 1045 digit prime number by Phil Carmody         */
/*     Prime as DNS cname chain by Roy Arends and Walter Belgers        */
/*                                                                      */
/*     Usage is:  cat title-key scrambled.vob | efdtt >clear.vob        */
/*   where title-key = "153 2 8 105 225" or other similar 5-byte key    */

dig decss.friet.org|perl -ne'if(/^x/){s/[x.]//g;print pack(H124,$_)}'


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