"NSI is down right now"?

about a domain name that expired several days ago

[johannamck]

I am interested in a domain name. Its expiration date was several days ago.

I was expecting for it to be put on hold, but to my surprise, it still says "Status Active"

In Whois it says "Cached Whois 2004-01-14 (NSI is down right now)". It has been saying that for several days.

What is going on here? Can I expect this domain name to be put on hold anytime soon (and eventually, for it to become available)?

Any input would be greatly appreciated.

[amznVibe]

Are you using a service like WhoisReport.com that pulls down their own zone-files and runs their own whois? They do cache the output if there was a previous request recently.

Otherwise you might be using a service that has done too many requests to NSI and has gotten blocked by them, so the automated program thinks they are "down"

If the domain was originally registered with Network Solutions (aka NSI) then you can use the whois tool directly on Network Solutions [networksolutions.com] for best info.

This might be helpful to you:
a very good domain life cycle chart [domain-retriever.com]

What is the TLD of the domain (.com, .net etc)?

[johannamck]

Thank you for your response, and for the links. I checked the NSI Whois but it did not reveal more information.

I didn't see any "status" listed such as "on hold" or "active". It just confirmed the expiration date of several days ago.

I read in the meantime that sometimes it can take months, up to years (?!), for a domain to go into redemption period after its expiration date. I hope this isn't the case here.

I wonder if I should've waited until the domain was actually on hold, before putting a snapnames on it...?

[amznVibe]

You get to switch your snapname to another name if you want. If you bought it from a snapname discount reseller you might only get a handful of switches allowed, but if you got it from snapnames directly I think it has unlimited switches (check to be sure).

[johannamck]

I think I'll stick with it for a little while longer.

The bad thing is, when I have a snapnames credit sitting around, I end up using it on some domain that I didn't want very badly in the first place :)

Thanks for your help.