Re: small vent

[Michael Dillon <michael () memra com>]

On Sat, 27 Jun 1998, Patrick Greenwell wrote:

> > Why can't the ISPs get their act together and use a whois client that
> > allows a simple request like "whois name" to find the appropriate
> > database? 
>
> Possibly because that would be a backwards way to approach to the
> issue. What you propose would require that every person running a machine
> that has a version of whois install this new version of whois, rather than
> handling it intelligently at the registry level which would require no
> action on the part of the hundreds of thousands of machines out there. 

I believe in distributed intelligence rather than making everyone rely on
a single central point of failure. If the default registry compiled into
your whois client fails then you can no longer reach any registry database
at all whereas an intelligent client would still be able to reach most
databases. There is also the problem that the default registry in most
whois clients is the Internic run by NSI and the management of that
company has shown themselves time and time again to be utterly clueless
about these kinds of issues. I don't hold out much hope that pleading
on hands and knees with the royal Internic will lead to them implementing
a whois proxy service.

--
Michael Dillon                 -               Internet & ISP Consulting
Memra Communications Inc.      -               E-mail: michael () memra com
Check the website for my Internet World articles -  http://www.memra.com