Re: Getting hold of serial numbers

On Wed Dec 15, 2004 at 20:44:02 -0500, Barry Margolin wrote:
>In article <cpqkjk$15j7$1@sf1.isc.org>, Pete Ehlke <pde@rfc822.net>
>wrote:
>
>> Please don't. The DNS and the WHOIS databases are not the same thing,
>> and there is no intrinsic link between the two.
>
>Why do people keep saying this? The delegations in the GTLD servers
>come from the registries, and the registrars provide WHOIS servers that
>work off the same data that they send to the registry.
>
Largely because those of us who keep saying it have seen complete
garbage come out of various and sundry off-brand, fly by night WHOIS
databases often enough these past few years that we just don't trust
WHOIS at all any more.

The real data is contained in the DNS, and is just as easy to query as
what's there in WHOIS. Why point novices at data that may be wrong or
misleading, when the real, authoritative data is readily to hand?

-Pete