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[Martin C <martin AT mchomenet.com>]

As mentioned previously here, I am working on a WHOIS server that 
OpenNIC may use should the community want to. This is a progress report.

So far, it is responding to queries, and provides the information it 
retrieves from the TLD database. However, it is not providing a "central 
query point" yet. That is, it is meant to run on the Tier1 servers 
hosting their own respective TLD controls which would be queried directly.

You cannot generally ask for .free and then reg.for.free, for example, 
you have to ask the server hosting .free directly for reg.for.free.

I tested both the system WHOIS port from BSD, and another client I found 
on the web written in C. The third-party client asked for the TLD 
controller, whereas the system WHOIS worked as expected. I'm still 
trying to narrow down the RFC that specifies the exact behaviour for this.

The only other critical point is that my WHOIS server was designed as a 
companion piece to my User and Domain Manager. It wont work outside of 
it's general design for that. That is open source and a new public 
release is pending (just waiting for a response from a member about a 
test registration they did).

Just thought those interested might like to know.

Martin.