Nominet Port 43 Whois Policy Changes

Unable to check your UK domains? (new changes)

Nominet has a new whois usage policy effective from December 13 2005. If you find that you are unable to check the status of your UK domains the reason could be this.

The recent Nominet changes necessitates some manual configuration changes to all our software products. If you are familiar with the string tokens (Data Extraction Setup > String Tokens, from the context menu) you can make the changes yourself. However if you don't wish to make the configuration changes on your own, download the latest version of the software. Right click on any .UK domain name in the list (after installing the new version and opening any of your existing data files) and select Data Extraction Setup > Reset To Default. Press yes when you are prompted for confirmation.

Excerpt from Nominet website regarding the port 43 whois usage:

What are the query limits for the WHOIS?

There are two query limits in place for each query. These limits are not per IP address, they are per user (it is probably implemented based on the querying IP address).

A limit of 5 queries per second.
A limit of 1,000 queries per rolling 24 hours.

If you find you are unable to check UK domain names, stop all lookups and check the connection settings within the software (Watch My Domains, Domain Name Analyzer or any of the other domain name software products) and make sure that you are not doing more than the specified queries. Then wait an hour before checking your domain again.

To account for the new registrar lookup restrictions (some other registrars have restrictions that are more strict) you should set the number of connections for whois.nic.uk (the default Nominet whois server) to 1 and connection interval to 90 seconds or more in WMD or DNA (you can use a much lower connection interval if you plan to lookup less than 1000 domains a day).

If you have access to the Nominet DAC, you can configure our software products to use the approved whois server and port.

We have been told by a number of customers that it is almost impossible to do Nominet whois lookups while using larger ISPs like AOL, British telecom, etc. Most of the IP blocks belonging to these ISPs are being blocked probably because of heavy use/abuse. If you find you are unable to lookup UK domains, your only solution may be to use a different ISP.

Whois Abuse

Please note that Nominet is very careful about people trying to mine their database. Some times entire IP blocks get blocked whenever a suspected data mining activity takes place. Most times the people affected are within the United Kingdom (probably because these attempts are made by some one within UK). See the related links below.

References

Nominet Whois

Nominet Whois 2 (from 13th December 2005)

Nominet: Public Register Search Service