Fetch domain information from who.is programmatically¶
We have the domain google.com, which we would like to get the domain information for.
First, we need to find the registry that holds the who.is data for .com domains. We do this by retrieving the information from The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority.
whois.iana.org:43 on port 43.
$ telnet whois.iana.org 43
com
This will return us a bunch of information relating to that TLD. We are looking for this line (should be near the end):
whois: whois.verisign-grs.com
The who.is server for the .com is whois.verisign-grs.com
Finally we can get the domain information by using telnet to connect to the who.is server, and then typing the domain name (including the TLD).
$ telnet whois.verisign-grs.com 43
google.com
You should see all the domain information for this server.
Using whois-servers.net¶
You can skip the first step above by using whois-servers.net.
Simply prefix the domain to the domain above and telnet it on 43 to be connected to the correct server.
# Connects to whois.verisign-grs.com
$ telnet com.whois-servers.net 43
google.com
# Connects to whois.nic.uk
$ telnet co.uk.whois-servers.net 43
google.co.uk