Whois Secrets Revealed

Whois is a service available on the Internet that allows you to check for information about a web site. You can discover the IP address of a web site and also the registrar and web site host. It's a program that tell you exactly who is behind the operation of the site or owns the site. It also provides seekers with a name and a contact number that matches the site's ISP number.

Whois reveals many secrets including whether or not that blank page you keep bringing up under a certain domain name exists or is owned by somebody. It is a great way to confirm whether or not a domain name is available for use. It is also of use if you feel a site is sending you spam or abusing you in any way. By finding out information from the whois database you know which ISP deserves to receive your letter of complaint.

When a web hosting service registers a new DNS domain or a new IP address it is required to list everything (including the registration data, the name of the owners, location of the site and contact numbers) in a public database. A number of separate databases are usually maintained by web hosting services. These include a database for IP numbers, a database for gTLD domains and a database for ccTLD domains. These databases are called "whois." Whois is also the name of the tool and the protocol to that is used to access the entitlement of domain names.

In the past, Whois was used primarily as a way to find out whether or not a domain name was bought and who paid for it. Until the late nineties, Network Solutions (now a VeriSign company) was the only registrar of domain names. Things got complicated when ICANN gave other companies the right to collect domain registrations in a database. As a result, Whois was providing incomplete results because of the inability to keep up with the huge influx of registrars. One of the Whois secrets is that it has since given birth to a similar site called BetterWhoIs http://www.betterwhois.com. This site has the ability to search all registrars and provide more accurate results than plain old Whois.

However Whois and BetterWhoIs are both great resources for finding and contacting the owners of websites. They are still of great value when it comes to discovering whether or not that domain name you have always fancied is actually free. Many of the people who registered domain names with Whois in the early years did so with the idea that people would pay big bucks for common or popular names. Many individuals made quite a bit of money by registering on Whois and taking the most desirable and accessible domain names out of public access and into the private market.

Whois and BetterWhois can also prevent you from having your name poached by someone who specializes in selling domain names. If you own several domain names always be aware of when they expire to avoid them from being filched and sold back to you for a pretty penny by a cyber entrepreneur.

Fantastic Value Web Hosting!

Get 20GB of transfer for only $7.95