5 ms·

"whois jvns.ca This will usually give you the right answer, but it might be an old cached version." Is that really ever a problem? Who changes authoritative

"whois jvns.ca This will usually give you the right answer, but it might be an old cached version." Is that really ever a problem? Who changes authoritative nameservers for a domain? This is by far the easiest way and the whole blog post could have just been six lines long.

fennecfoxen 5y ago
yes? > I’m writing this because if you made a DNS update and it didn’t work, there are 2 options: Your authoritative nameserver doesn’t have the correct record. Your authoritative nameserver does have the correct record, but an old record is cached and you need to wait for the cache to expire
pdonis 5y ago
> Who changes authoritative nameservers for a domain? Anyone who has just bought a domain, or anyone who is changing their hosting to a new provider.
agwa 5y ago
whois only works for registered domains. It won't help you find the authoritative servers for a subdomain of a registered domain (e.g. subdomain.jvns.ca). It also relies on the registry operating an accurate and reliable whois service. I would not count on that from ccTLDs.
- ectopod 5y ago
  To get complete whois information you need to query the registrar. Whether the whois or DNS is the most up-to-date source for the authoritative DNS servers for a domain seems like an implementation detail at the registrar rather than something you can know in advance. I guess I'm missing something.
  - creeble 5y ago
    I think what the parent is saying is that the nameserver information coming from the registrar’s Whois may not be accurate in any way compared to what is actually in the DNS. The DNS (and, by extension, the authoritative nameservers for a domain) is, by definition, the most up-to-date source for the DNS. Edit: registrar’s whois
dewey 5y ago
> and the whole blog post could have just been six lines long The whole point of the blog posts is to explain the problem in detail, not getting some quick task done for the sake of getting it done. Just like https://jvns.ca/blog/2021/12/04/how-to-use-dig/ https://jvns.ca/blog/2021/12/04/how-to-use-dig/ isn't "Use man dig" but an in-depth explanations of the features and usage.
teh_klev 5y ago
Speaking as someone who worked for an ISP and looked after our DNS and domain name registration infrastructure (amongst many other things) lots of folks and for all sorts of different reasons. It's not as uncommon as you might think. And the extra diagnostic steps described in that article (or similar) were daily drivers when debugging customer support issues related to DNS.
NelsonMinar 5y ago
One of the primary times I'm interested in doing DNS queries carefully is when I updated my authoritative nameserver. What I'm wondering is how whois data is cached. Anyone have a reference on how that works in practice?

fennecfoxen 5y ago

yes? > I’m writing this because if you made a DNS update and it didn’t work, there are 2 options: Your authoritative nameserver doesn’t have the correct record. Your authoritative nameserver does have the correct record, but an old record is cached and you need to wait for the cache to expire

pdonis 5y ago

> Who changes authoritative nameservers for a domain? Anyone who has just bought a domain, or anyone who is changing their hosting to a new provider.

agwa 5y ago

whois only works for registered domains. It won't help you find the authoritative servers for a subdomain of a registered domain (e.g. subdomain.jvns.ca). It also relies on the registry operating an accurate and reliable whois service. I would not count on that from ccTLDs.

ectopod 5y ago
To get complete whois information you need to query the registrar. Whether the whois or DNS is the most up-to-date source for the authoritative DNS servers for a domain seems like an implementation detail at the registrar rather than something you can know in advance. I guess I'm missing something.
- creeble 5y ago
  I think what the parent is saying is that the nameserver information coming from the registrar’s Whois may not be accurate in any way compared to what is actually in the DNS. The DNS (and, by extension, the authoritative nameservers for a domain) is, by definition, the most up-to-date source for the DNS. Edit: registrar’s whois

dewey 5y ago

> and the whole blog post could have just been six lines long The whole point of the blog posts is to explain the problem in detail, not getting some quick task done for the sake of getting it done. Just like https://jvns.ca/blog/2021/12/04/how-to-use-dig/ https://jvns.ca/blog/2021/12/04/how-to-use-dig/ isn't "Use man dig" but an in-depth explanations of the features and usage.

teh_klev 5y ago

Speaking as someone who worked for an ISP and looked after our DNS and domain name registration infrastructure (amongst many other things) lots of folks and for all sorts of different reasons. It's not as uncommon as you might think. And the extra diagnostic steps described in that article (or similar) were daily drivers when debugging customer support issues related to DNS.

NelsonMinar 5y ago

One of the primary times I'm interested in doing DNS queries carefully is when I updated my authoritative nameserver. What I'm wondering is how whois data is cached. Anyone have a reference on how that works in practice?