With the new shared registration system model, the nature of the WHOIS server has changed. Traditionally, the InterNIC maintained the WHOIS server for .com, .net and .org domain names, and a single query returned full whois data including registrant, administrative contact, billing contact, technical contact, and nameserver information.

The Old Way:

A single query returned full whois data.

The New Way:

In the multi-registrar model, each registrar maintains a WHOIS server containing contact and nameserver information for domains registered with them. The InterNIC maintains a central, registry WHOIS server, which simply contains nameserver and registrar information for all .com, .net and .org domains.

To find out the registrar of record for a domain, consult the registry WHOIS server, at:

http://rs.internic.net/whois.html

The output from the registry WHOIS query will indicate the website address and WHOIS server address for domain's registrar of record, where full contact information can be found.

Key Points:

1. Only the WHOIS server of a domains' registrar of record can be considered authoritative
2. Some Registrar's configure their WHOIS server to perform a 'registry lookup' for other Registrar's domain names; some will even go so far as to perform a lookup on another registrar's WHOIS server. However, the only sure way to check domain availability or get contact and expiry information is to perform a WHOIS query with the domain's registrar of record. As a convenience, the OpenSRS WHOIS server is configured to check other Registrars' WHOIS databases.
3. Many WHOIS databases are not updated in realtime, so that you can make a change to record, but the change will not appear in the WHOIS output until sometime the next day. OpenSRS's WHOIS server is updated in realtime for all domains that we are the registrar for.