Michael.Dillon@radianz.com wrote:
The network itself is the primary contact information for a domain. Every nameserver has an IP address whose connectivity can be tracked through the network. Same thing for mail servers and anything else with an A record. This means that operationally it is far more important for the RIR whois directory to have working technical contacts.
A few weeks ago, we had a customer contact us regarding issues communicating with a domain. Investigation revealed that the domain handled it's own primary DNS server and the secondary DNS was pointed to another provider which had restricted outside queries to that particular server (and wasn't authoritative for the domain in the first place). The problem was that the TTL's on the NS RRs were different by 2 days and the remaining NS in cache was refusing queries. IP addresses weren't registered to the responsible party. Domain wasn't registered to responsible party. We had to relay the information in a "best effort" approach through three different organizations in the hopes that the responsible person would get informed and fix the problem. This is not the ideal method of contact and wasted man hours in multiple organizations due to inaccurate information. The primary use of whois is still valid and anonymous/inaccurate records waste time and money for legitimate purposes. -Jack