Can you catch manually using whois ?

aquanuke · Jun 15, 2005

Ive been refreshing whois every few minutes while Im sitting at a PC and earlier I refreshed the page said "Suspended" then I refreshed the page 2 seconds latter came back "Registered" :-x

Even if it did come up available would take me atleast 4 minutes to go to a registrar, stick it in the cart and add my creditcard...

Are dropcatchers really that quick? Like seconds to catch them or is the whois just slow to update.

bb99 · Jun 15, 2005

My experience is that this method will only work if nobody else is chasing the name you're looking at.

The problem you've got is that WHOIS is only updated every 5 minutes, but the "live database" is updated in real time. A typical time line would be:

9.00am - WHOIS updated
9.01am - Your WHOIS check says domain is suspended
9.02am - Domain released for registration
9.02am - Your WHOIS check says domain is suspended (even though it isn't)
9.03am - Domain is registered by someebody else
9.04am - Your WHOIS check says domain is suspended (even though it isn't)
9.05am - WHOIS updated
9.05am - Your WHOIS now shows the new registrant's registration

charlie · Jun 15, 2005

aquanuke said:
Are dropcatchers really that quick? Like seconds to catch them or is the whois just slow to update.

unfortunately for us YES
for them they probably arent fast enough as they are still getting pipped to good domain by other dropcatchers

You have to realise that while you sit there spinning on your chair hitting the refresh every now and again and looking at a database that doesn't update all that often dropcatchers have automated scripts that continually querry the "live" system and with so many people playing the bigger game these days any scrap will more than likely get snapped up before your whois record even knew it happend

good luck

eetc · Jun 15, 2005

It is possible. I have a robot that watches whois and registers via a tag automatically. I don't own a tag so I can't fire speculative emails. I have registered many but I suspect that in each case they dropped in the 30 or so seconds prior to the whois database being updated and I looked them up in within a few seconds. So, basically, a good amount of luck was involved.

Chris