On 03/28/2013 03:11 PM, Stroller wrote: > The search I made before posting led me the wikipedia article which > mentioned, for example, using thick and thin client models. > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whois#Thin_and_thick_lookups > > One might assume, for example, that a thin client might tend to give > more accurate and up-to-date information, but of course there's also > the issue that the whois server for the domain might move. Thus the > client might need to be updated in a timely manner, too. >
The thin model sort of works like DNS, except everything is unstructured and totally made-up on the server side and guessed-at on the client side. The clients are trying to parse the unstructured output, like you would if you were trying to screen scrape a webpage. As of ten seconds ago, this is what I get for a lookup of orlitzky.com: Domain Name: ORLITZKY.COM Registrar: GANDI SAS Whois Server: whois.gandi.net Referral URL: http://www.gandi.net ... The "Whois Server:" for the domain is something like an NS record, where the guy higher up points you at the next level down. If the whois server for the domain changed, you wouldn't need to update the client -- you could just ask the top-level server for it again. What *would* make you update the client is if, say, that top-level server started outputting a space between "Server" and ":".
