Question on snagging expired domains

Any advice?

[Jellex]

Within the last week or so I noticed the WHOIS info on a couple expired (NetSol) domains I am monitoring change to:

“Domain not found locally, but Registry points back to local DB.
Local whois DB must be out of date.”

Which tipped me off that they were probably about to be released. So I setup an ExpireFish.com account to monitor these domains. Today, ExpireFish notified my through e-mail that it had actually caught one of the domains and registered it for me.

I did some snooping around, and from what I can tell, the WHOIS info on the domain it caught still hasn’t changed from reading:

“Domain not found locally, but Registry points back to local DB.
Local whois DB must be out of date.”

My question is, how did ExpireFish know the domain I had it monitoring was available – where is it looking to see that the domain is available?

The other domain I have ExpireFish monitoring is the one I really want and I want to do everything I can to make sure I get it. If I was going to “beat the system” and beat ExpireFish (just to say that I did ;) ), what is the best way to see if a domain is available? I would assume it would the WHOIS database of the dommain registrar, but in this case it doesn’t seem so. And help or advice would be GREATLY appreciated. :)

[Lisa]

Whois is known to be 24 hours old. Some registrars use live whois but NetSol's whois is not. Wait 24 hours. The Registry's main whois is also 24 hours old. So changing registrars and other things like that will give you that lag. So you will see tomorrow that you are the owner.

Registrars do not use whois to see if a domain is available. They use RRP (Registry to Registrar Protocal). If you want to see if the domain is available you will need to use the API of a Registrar. ExpireFish is a eNom Reseller. So they are using eNom's API to access the RRP.

Hope that helps.

[Jellex]

That is actually very interesting! :) Let me make sure I understand what you are saying - If I were to become a domain reseller, through eNom, Tucows or whoever, then I could use their API and this RRP to get faster, more up to date information about domains than doing a WHOIS lookup? Is this correct?

[Omni]

I'm interested in this too. How does Snapback and Expirefish get the "up-to-the-second" (is it up to the second?) details about the domains? What keeps them ahead of the competition? Any thoughts?

[Lisa]

yes and no.

You would not get more timely access to the same info that the whois provides. But with the RRP check command you could see if the domain is available again 24 hours before the whois shows it. Then you could register the domain all before the whois shows anything.

[Jellex]

I see. You have been very helpful. Thank you, Lisa! :)

[zechariah]

Come to think of expirefish is much cheaper than snapback & both are using the same method - but the equipment i wouldn't know.

Lisa - saw your profile & though that you do look like Justin Saphiro of lonely planet -are you?
You do say u like to travel :) :)

[Lisa]

Well, all regististration take place with the RRP at some point. ExpireFish only uses one registrar. SnapNames use multiple registrars. But the real difference would be how many requests a second they do for you. I don't have figures on how many RPS each one does.

Justin who? You think I look like a boy? Yeah I like to travel, it would be boring to stay in one place.