Top-Level Domains and Their Owners

When you first get an Internet connection, your Internet service provider (ISP) will be able to help you establish your domain. In most cases, it can maintain your domain for you as well. In a startup phase, this might be the easiest way to go. Then, you can have the domain re-delegated to you and your own name server later. When that happens, you can probably get your ISP to provide your secondary, slave, name service so you can fulfill the requirement for two or more name servers you will find everywhere.

If you want to register your own domain(s) in foreign TLDs, you might have to do a bit more work.

Finding the TLD Owners

Each national TLD has a different national registrar, which has gotten the domain delegated by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). The appointed registrar has absolute power over the running of the TLD as far as the law permits.

The requirements for registering under different TLDs vary. In some national TLDs, you must own a company registered in the country and will be allowed only one domain per company. In some, though, you will be able to register as many domains as you want; all you have to do is request multiple domains and pay the required fees.

IANA maintains Web pages enumerating every TLD and their registrars, including the three-letter TLDs such as com, net, and so on. These are available at http://www.iana.org/top-level-domains.html. If, or when, any new three-letter TLDs are established, you should be able to find the registrars for them there as well. The .com, .net, and .org domains can be registered through many accredited registrars. You can find more information about them at http://www.internic.net/.

After you have found the correct TLD registrar, you can proceed with the prescribed registration process. I'll discuss more about that later.

Finding the Reverse Zone Owners

Your ISP is the correct organization to contact to get your reverse lookups working. As you will recall from Chapter 1, an unbroken chain must exist from in-addr.arpa to your network block for reverse lookups to work. Your ISP will, usually, have all the IP network blocks it owns delegated to it, and can in turn assign authority over the block it assigned to you to your name servers. Unfortunately, not all ISPs take reverse lookup equally seriously and might not be very helpful. In that case, you might need to educate them or change ISPs.

You can use dig to follow the chain of delegations from in-addr.arpa to where it ends, or, as the case may be, dead-ends. The SOA records should tell you who to contact about delegating the reverse domain to you, or an intermediary if needed. In addition, whois knows about assigned IP blocks and who got it assigned in the first case.

The whois Database

whois is the name of a database the Internet registrars maintain. It's not actually one database anymore, though; it has been regionally segmented. It contains information about all domains and networks delegated and assigned on the Internet. If you want to find out about a domain and network or who owns what, whois is the answer. Table 4.1 contains the whois databases as of this writing.

Table 4.1. whois Databases

whois Server	Web Interface	Serves
whois.internic.net	whois.internic.net	.com, .net, .org, and the TLDs themselves
whois.ripe.net	www.ripe.net	Europe and surrounding areas
whois.arin.net	whois.arin.net	The Americas and sub-Saharan Africa
whois.apnic.net	whois.apnic.net	Asia and the Pacific

Each of the whois servers supports a help command. They might have slightly different options, so it's worth checking the possibilities in each.

A couple versions of the command-line tool whois, which is used to query the whois databases, are available.

whois

The classic whois tool essentially takes one option, -h. The -h option takes one argument, which is the name of the server to query. The other options are, as a rule, just passed on to the whois server.

The even older versions of whois query now-defunct whois servers. If you have one of these, you must use the -h option to specify a now-working server whenever you use whois.

Newer versions of whois use whois.internic.net as the default server.

fwhois

fwhois is more similar to the old UNIX command finger than to whois, thus the f in its name. The syntax is, as with finger

 fwhois query@server 

If you need to give it multi-word queries, or include whois options, you must pass it all as one single query (quoted if necessary), as in the following example:

 $ fwhois [e-mail] [rs.internic.net] Whois Server Version 1.1 Domain names in the .com, .net, and .org domains can now be registered with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net for detailed information. <WHOIS help> Select a sub-topic for help; '?' (with no RETURN) for a list of options; RETURN key to return to WHOIS. <OVERVIEW> WHOIS is used to look up records in the registry database.  Whois can provide information about domains, nameservers, and registrars. Enter a string to search the database.  By default, WHOIS performs a very broad search, looking in all record types for matches to your query in these fields: domain name, nameserver name, nameserver IP address, and registrar names. Use keywords to narrow the search (for example, 'domain root'). … 

Similar to the normal whois, fwhois uses whois.internic.net as the default server.

Using whois

Because fwhois is what I have on the computers I use, I will use its syntax here. As mentioned earlier, when you use regular whois, use the -h option to specify the server.

Let's see what whois can tell us about LinPro. We can start by looking up the C net that has been assigned to LinPro:

 $ host linpro.no linpro.no has address 195.0.166.23 $ whois 195.0.166 [rs.internic.net] Whois Server Version 1.1 Domain names in the .com, .net, and .org domains can now be registered with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net for detailed information.    Server Name: SMP.LINPRO.NO    IP Address: 195.0.166.3    Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, INC.    Whois Server: whois.networksolutions.com    Referral URL: www.networksolutions.com >>> Last update of whois database: Tue, 14 Mar 00 03:31:24 EST <<< The Registry database contains ONLY .COM, .NET, .ORG, .EDU domains and Registrars. 

As you saw in an earlier chapter, the block was actually assigned to eu.net and then reassigned by it to LinPro. Therefore, following the actual delegation chain with dig is a much safer way to locate who owns the network block if you have problems with your reverse lookups.

But, whois knows more about LinPro:

 $ whois 'linpro.no'@whois.ripe.net [joshua.ripe.net] % Rights restricted by copyright. See http://www.ripe.net/ripencc/pub-services/db/ copyright.html domain:      linpro.no descr:       LinPro AS, Oslo admin-c:     DA16-RIPE tech-c:      DA16-RIPE zone-c:      DA16-RIPE nserver:     smp.linpro.no nserver:     ns1.xtn.net nserver:     ifi.uio.no notify:      [e-mail] changed:     [e-mail] 19951023 changed:     [e-mail] 19960128 changed:     [e-mail] 19960522 changed:     [e-mail] 19960930 source:      RIPE person:      Dag Asheim address:     LinPro AS address:     Waldemar Thranes gate 98B address:     N-0175 Oslo address:     Norway phone:       [phone] fax-no:      [phone] e-mail:      [e-mail] nic-hdl:     DA16-RIPE notify:      [e-mail] changed:     [e-mail] 19951023 changed:     [e-mail] 19960320 changed:     [e-mail] 19990202 source:      RIPE 

The previous code shows that the domain linpro.no has been registered by LinPro AS in Oslo and that the administrative, technical, and zone contacts are all the same person, identified by the handle DA16-RIPE. This is a handle for a person, and the query helpfully reports to whom the handle corresponds, which in this example is Dag Asheim of LinPro AS. The address, phone numbers, email address, and handle (again) are all provided.

If you run, or have ever taken part in, the registration of a domain, look it up in whois. Is the information correct? If not, contact your TLD registrar and have the information corrected. You might also amuse yourself by finding my handle and checking whether anyone else you know is in there.