INTRODUCTION

Whois records give us information about who registered the website's domain name and where the website is being hosted. Looking up a site's whois record, can help figure out whether a site is in-game, and can privide additional contact information.

AMERICAN WHOIS DOMAIN RECORDS

Step 1

If the website ends in .aero, .arpa, .biz, .com, .coop, .edu, .info, .int, .museum, .net, and .org, we first go to http://www.internic.net/whois.html to look up where the domain name was registered, and we then go to the Registrar's website to look up the actual domain information.

Let's use pushtimes.com as an example. Go to http://www.internic.net/whois.html

Enter the name "pushtimes.com" in the box and make sure the "Domain" option is selected. We get the following record:

Whois Server Version 1.3

Domain names in the .com, .net, and .org domains can now be registered
with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net
for detailed information.

   Domain Name: PUSHTIMES.COM
   Registrar: BULKREGISTER.COM, INC.
   Whois Server: whois.bulkregister.com
   Referral URL: http://www.bulkregister.com
   Name Server: DNS01.LIVEPLANET.COM
   Name Server: DNS02.LIVEPLANET.COM
   Updated Date: 24-jan-2002


>>> Last update of whois database: Sun, 28 Jul 2002 04:48:52 EDT <<<

The Registry database contains ONLY .COM, .NET, .ORG, .EDU domains and
Registrars.

What does this tell us? It tells us that this domain name was registered at Bulkregister.com, that's where we'll go to look up more information about the domain. There are many companies, called Registrars, that can register a domain name. Each of these companies keeps its own database with details of the domain names they registered. That's why this first site just points us to the Registrar's own website for more information about the domain.

This entry also tells us that it's being hosted by Liveplanet.com. That's what the two Name Server lines mean. A name server is a directory that contains information about the IP address of the computer where the website is hosted. We know that the show Push, NV is a Live Planet project, so if the name server is "DNS01.LIVEPLANET.COM", this tells us that the website is probably in-game.

Step 2

We now go to http://www.bulkregister.com for the full domain name record. If you go to this website and you scroll through the left side bar, you'll se a link titled  "Lookup a domain in the bulkregister whois database". Each registrar's website should have the link to their whois database somewhere on the front page. At Bulkregister, the whois lookup page is at:
http://bulkregister.com/brwhois.phtml

We enter "pushtimes.com" in the box on this page and submit. We get the following record:

[whois.bulkregister.com]
The data in Bulkregister.com's WHOIS database is provided to you by
Bulkregister.com for information purposes only, that is, to assist you in
obtaining information about or related to a domain name registration
record.  Bulkregister.com makes this information available "as is", and
does not guarantee its accuracy.  By submitting a WHOIS query, you
agree that you will use this data only for lawful purposes and that,
under no circumstances will you use this data to: (1) allow, enable,
or otherwise support the transmission of mass or bulk unsolicited,
commercial advertising or solicitations via electronic mail, aka (SPAM).
(2) enable high volume, automated, electronic processes that apply
to Bulkregister.com (or its systems).  The compilation, repackaging,
dissemination or other use of this data is expressly prohibited without
the prior written consent of Bulkregister.com.  Bulkregister.com reserves
the right to modify these terms at any time.  By submitting this query,
you agree to abide by these terms.

LivePlanet, Inc.
   2644 30th Street
   Santa Monica, CA 90405
   US

   Domain Name: PUSHTIMES.COM

   Administrative Contact:
        LivePlanet Admin    domainadmin@liveplanet.com
        LivePlanet, Inc.
        2644 30th Street
        Santa Monica, CA 90405
        US
        Phone: 310-664-2400
        Fax: 310-664-2401
   Technical Contact:
        LivePlanet Admin  domainadmin@liveplanet.com
        LivePlanet, Inc.
        2644 30th Street
        Santa Monica, CA 90405
        US
        Phone: 310-664-2400
        Fax: 310-664-2401

   Record updated on 2002-01-24 12:34:35.
   Record created on 2002-01-24.
   Record expires on 2003-01-24.
   Database last updated on 2002-07-28 16:57:06 EST.

   Domain servers in listed order:

   DNS01.LIVEPLANET.COM          64.70.61.201                  
   DNS02.LIVEPLANET.COM          4.20.163.3                    

Register your domain name at http://www.bulkregister.com

After you get past the legal blurb, we get to the actual domain record for pushtimes.com The administrative contact is usually the owner of the domain name, while the technical contact is often the person or company responsible for the server where the domain is hosted. In this case, both point to Live Planet.  The "record updated" date tells us the last time this information was updated by the owner, while "Record created" tells us when the domain name was first registered. The domain name server information is repeated here.

INTERNATIONAL WHOIS DOMAIN RECORDS

International domain names are any domains that end in two letters (.uk, .fr, .de, etc.)  those letters represent a country. Each country has its own rules about registering domain names, and stores different information. Some have contact details such as address, others don't. If you get one of the International domains you can look it up here:
http://www.zoneedit.com/whois.html

For example, in Second State we got the domain http://www.bancohelleborus.cx, so we enter bancohelleborus.cx in the box and submit. We get the following record:

Registrant Information:

 Domain Name: bancohelleborus.cx
 Creation Date: 2002-03-26 01:27:48
 Expiration Date: 2003-03-26 01:27:48
 Last Modified: 2002-03-26 01:27:48
 
 Nameservers:
 NS.WMGNIC.COM
 NS2.WMGNIC.COM

 Status: Active
 
 Registrar: Christmas Island Technology Corp (citc)
 Whois Server: whois.nic.cx

This tells us the domain is in the Christmas Islands and the date it was registered. That is all the information that this country's domain registrar stores. No contact information is available in this case.

ADVANCED LESSON
How to find additional websites for a game

NOTE: At this time, it does not seem to be possible to find all the domain names registered to a certain person or company. If you know of a way to do this, please let me know.

You might be able to find more in-game sites at http://www.whoisreport.com/ by searching for certain keywords. For example, we know from visiting pushtimes.com that there's a place in Push, NV called "Sloman's Slo-Dance Bar" Let's see if a domain name has been registered with the keyword "Sloman" somewhere in the domain name. We go to http://www.whoisreport.com/
and enter "sloman" in the search box. We can further limit our search by clicking on the "left anchor" checkbox, meaning that we only want domain names that begin with the word "sloman". So, "slomansdancebar.com" would show up but not something like "georgesloman.com"

We submit our search, the results can be seen here:
http://www.whoisreport.com/?q=sloman&bc=y&left=y&expired=2&qrows=20

Ê    Ê                             COM    NET    ORG    INFO    BIZ    US
>>    sloman               [ w ] [ v ]    [ w ] [ v ]    [ w ] [ v ]    info    biz    us
1    sloman              [ w ] [ v ]    [ w ] [ v ]    [ w ] [ v ]    info    biz    us
2    sloman-neptun [ w ] [ v ]    net    org    [ w ] [ v ]    biz    us
3    slomananddor  [ w ] [ v ]    net    org    info    biz    us
4    slomandesign  [ w ] [ v ]    net    org    info    biz    us
5    slomandesigns    com    net    org    info    biz    us
6    slomani              [ w ] [ v ]    [ w ] [ v ]    org    info    biz    us
7    slomanpettitt     [ w ] [ v ]    net    org    info    biz    us
8    slomans            [ w ] [ v ]    net    org    info    biz    us
9    slomansdoor       com    net    org    info    biz    us
10    slomanski       [ w ] [ v ]    net    org    info    biz    us

The [W] link means that the domain name is registered and you can see the whois record by clicking on the link. The [V] link is a link to the website for the domain name. Any records that don't have the [W] and [V} links are available to be registered. In this case, it doesn't look like there's a domain name for registered for Sloman's Slo-Dance Bar.

© 2002 by FrankenPaula