[dns-operations] fun with .gov

[Kim Davies]

On 14/01/2010, at 10:19 AM, Michael Sinatra wrote:
> 
> On MacOS X and *bsd systems, 'whois xxx.gov' attempts to contact the 
> server at gov.whois-servers.net.  That used to work, but at some point, 
> I started getting the following:
> 
> [sonic] ~> whois nih.gov
> whois: gov.whois-servers.net: Non-recoverable failure in name resolution
> 
> [sonic] ~> dig gov.whois-servers.net
> gov.whois-servers.net.  511     IN      CNAME   nic.gov.

Neither "gov.whois-servers.net" nor "nic.gov" are the WHOIS server of record for the domain. The WHOIS server they have registered is "whois.dotgov.gov".

kim