Re: FW: [tld-admin-poc] Fwd: Re: .pro whois registry down?

[Doug Barton <dougb () dougbarton us>]

Joseph,

Thanks for the update. However the current state of things is not good 
... My Ubuntu host tries to use whois.dotproregistry.net, which has no 
address records. FreeBSD by default uses pro.whois-servers.net, which 
resolves to whois.registrypro.pro (which has an A record), but never 
returns with any data (arguably worse than failing immediately with an 
obvious error).

If it were me, I would have done the following:

1. Reach out to the OS vendors and the folks at whois-servers.net with 
information that the proper host name for your whois service is 
changing. Include a drop-dead date of 3 years in the future for the old 
names to stop working.

2. Place a CNAME at the two (or more?) old host names so that the 
service will continue to work in the meantime.

The CNAME costs you nothing, and while I agree that it should be able to 
be removed at some point in the future, having things not work at all in 
the short term is not the right approach.

It's also not realistic to expect folks to be able to chase this down on 
their own ... anyone familiar with using whois on the command line has 
most assuredly grown accustomed to the convenience of having it "just 
work," as it has for the last decade or so. While people certainly *can* 
go back to the "good old days" of having to hunt down each registry's 
whois server individually, it's hard to think of that as the best approach.

Is there some reason that the above can't be/hasn't been done that I'm 
missing?

Doug


On 03/09/2016 02:17 PM, Joseph Yee wrote:
> Hi Doug,
>
> Afilias had updated .PRO whois host in Jan 2016, and we filed the record
> to ICANN & IANA (http://www.iana.org/domains/root/db/pro.html).
>
> The new host is 'whois.afilias.net <http://whois.afilias.net>' and not
> 'whois.dotproregistry.net <http://whois.dotproregistry.net>' anymore.
>
> Some operating systems may not update their whois configuration yet.
> You may need to check and update the configuration manually for PRO
> WHOIS server before official patch were available.
>
> Best Regards,
> Joseph Yee
> Afilias
>
> On Wed, Mar 9, 2016 at 4:56 PM, Michael Flanagan <mflanagan () afilias info
> <mailto:mflanagan () afilias info>> wrote:
>
>     -----Original Message-----
>     From: Doug Barton [mailto:dougb () dougbarton us
>     <mailto:dougb () dougbarton us>]
>     Sent: Wednesday, March 09, 2016 4:54 PM
>     To: tld-admin-poc () afilias info <mailto:tld-admin-poc () afilias info>;
>     tld-tech-poc () afilias info <mailto:tld-tech-poc () afilias info>
>     Subject: [tld-admin-poc] Fwd: Re: .pro whois registry down?
>
>     FYI
>
>     -------- Forwarded Message --------
>     Subject: Re: .pro whois registry down?
>     Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2016 13:51:28 -0800
>     From: Doug Barton <dougb () dougbarton us <mailto:dougb () dougbarton us>>
>     To: Bryan Holloway <bholloway () pavlovmedia com
>     <mailto:bholloway () pavlovmedia com>>, NANOG list <nanog () nanog org
>     <mailto:nanog () nanog org>>
>
>     On 03/09/2016 01:24 PM, Bryan Holloway wrote:
>      > Anyone else noticing that the .pro TLD is failing for some
>     things, and
>      > their WHOIS registry appears to be unavailable?
>
>     The delegation from the root to PRO, and the PRO name servers
>     themselves,
>     seem to be working.
>
>      > I appear to be able to resolve, but whois times out, and we're
>     getting
>      > reports that mail isn't going through for some folks with this TLD.
>
>     The address records for whois.dotproregistry.net
>     <http://whois.dotproregistry.net> are missing.
>
>     Doug