** Sometime around 12:08 -0500 03/24/99, Mitch Collinsworth sent everyone:
>>>>The whois telnet server at rs.internic.net is
>>>>history, though distributed whois is still available.
>>>
>>>I'm not sure which WHOIS server _you_ are talking about,
>>
>>Port 23 -- the CLI server that has for years been available at the
>>standard telnet port.
>>
>>>but the normal
>>>WHOIS server (port 43) run by Internic still seems to be alive and well
>>>and answering queries as of five seconds ago.
>>
>>That's what I referred to as the distributed whois server -- which, yes,
>>is still running (thank glub).
>
>Hmm, either I'm confused here or you are. (And I'm necessarily
>assuming it's you.) My experience is that the whois database and the
>root DNS database are not in fact the same thing. I have seen a skew
>problem between them that took months to correct. If you _really_ want
>to know who someone's nameservers are, look at the NS records in the DNS.
>Whois is (sometimes) useful for contact info, but I wouldn't trust it
>beyond that.
For most pursuits for which I (and many folks) use whois, the distinction
is irrelevant. If I really need DNS records, I use nslookup.
Are we somehow getting bogged down in minutia and failing to see that
there's a forest of change occurring here -- and it's not necessarily
a harbinger of *good* change?
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