using the DAC to catch

seanc · Apr 19, 2006

Hi All, i've been using a homemade perl script to catch domains up until now,
(and i've had a couple catches that i've been happy with)

i've been reading more and more about people using the DAC to catch,
i do have access to the DAC, can anyone point me in the right direction
so it can help me catch suspended domains.

all i know is that you can lookup a domain, theres not much documentation
about it.

ie: domain.co.uk

thanks!

bb99 · Apr 19, 2006

Well a dropcatching script works broadly as follows:

- decide which domain/s you want to check for
- keep checking to see if they are available over and over again
- if one of them is, fire off a PGP email to Nominet to try and register it

If you've already got a non DAC script then I'm assuming it's just the DAC you need help with.

All you need to do with the DAC is open up a connection and then query the domain name. You can do this manually with telnet like this:

server# telnet dac.nic.uk 2043
Trying 213.248.200.23...
Connected to lvs-mw.nominet.org.uk.
Escape character is '^]'.
fedex.co.uk
fedex.co.uk,Y,N,Y,1998-01-17,2006-01-17,4,NETNAMES

and you then keep sending the domain name (in this case fedex.co.uk

) until the name becomes free. At this point the DAC will return:

fedex.co.uk,N

and it's here that you need to register the domain as quickly as you can. So you just need to automate this into a script.

I don't know how to do this in Perl though, I use PHP.

jonno · Apr 19, 2006

prime domain to use as an example there

1 week today should be intresting

retired member 1 · Apr 19, 2006

bb99 · Apr 19, 2006

Superb

Better even than FC Domains's Mickey Mouse the other day!

But really, somebody should telephone them and tell them about it. That and federalexpress.co.uk. Someone needs to be sacked.

tifosi · Apr 19, 2006

That's a class piccy.

seanc · Apr 19, 2006

bb99 said:
and it's here that you need to register the domain as quickly as you can. So you just need to automate this into a script.

so am i correct in thinking that the DAC gives you the advantage to
automate/script things much easier?

Thanks for the replys.

aqls · Apr 19, 2006

DAC is just the domain availability checker, i.e. just a fast whois that allows more than 1000 miserable requests.

You then have to send your email to nominet email address separately to reg the domain.

I think you need to be a TAG and set up pgp (I'm not sure if you can do without that palaver, but def need to be a TAG to get DAC access)

scripting it all just makes it a bit quicker.

Still doesn't get you into the game

existing droppies are much too quick for us mere scriptkiddies!

-aqls-

bb99 · Apr 19, 2006

seanc said:
so am i correct in thinking that the DAC gives you the advantage to automate/script things much easier?

Pretty much yes. You need to remember that, for the decent domain names, the time that elapses between them becoming available and them being registered by A Catcher is generally less than half a second.

By allowing you to check availability 432,000 times every 24 hours, the DAC gives you an advantage over someone using (eg) WHOIS (which is of course limited to 1,000 queries per day).

jonno · Apr 19, 2006

bb99 said:
But really, somebody should telephone them and tell them about it. That and federalexpress.co.uk. Someone needs to be sacked.

i disagree! these big companies are so disorganised and i class that domain expiring as revenge for them messing my deliveries around th the past

just a shame it isnt citylink.co.uk instead. god how i hate that company

retired member 1 · Apr 19, 2006

jonno said:
i disagree! these big companies are so disorganised and i class that domain expiring as revenge for them messing my deliveries around th the past

just a shame it isnt citylink.co.uk instead. god how i hate that company

You mean city-link.com , I quite like them

jonno · Apr 19, 2006

J2theIZZO said:
You mean city-link.com , I quite like them

yes thats them... at least they are stuck with that shitty typo

bb99 · Apr 19, 2006

jonno said:
yes thats them... at least they are stuck with that shitty typo

shittylink.co.uk is available

retired member 1 · Apr 19, 2006

bb99 said:
shittylink.co.uk is available

No it's not....lies......

max99 · Apr 19, 2006

bb99 said:
Pretty much yes. You need to remember that, for the decent domain names, the time that elapses between them becoming available and them being registered by A Catcher is generally less than half a second.

By allowing you to check availability 432,000 times every 24 hours, the DAC gives you an advantage over someone using (eg) WHOIS (which is of course limited to 1,000 queries per day).

Anyone know what kind of system is used by major dropcatchers to get email domain request to Nominet submitted faster than a TAG holding "scriptkiddy"? Surely their (the big player's) handicap is having to monitor thousands of names rather than, say, one or two hundred? How do they get around Nominet look-up restrictions. 432,000 look-ups a day is not much even if trying for just 100 names! Often wondered answers to these questions but oddly hardly ever discussed on the boards.

grantw · Apr 19, 2006

max99 said:
Anyone know what kind of system is used by major dropcatchers to get email domain request to Nominet submitted faster than a TAG holding "scriptkiddy"? Surely their (the big player's) handicap is having to monitor thousands of names rather than, say, one or two hundred? How do they get around Nominet look-up restrictions. 432,000 look-ups a day is not much even if trying for just 100 names! Often wondered answers to these questions but oddly hardly ever discussed on the boards.

The only real big player monitoring 1000s of domains is dropcatcher.co.uk and you will notice that they catch almost zero of the top domains because of this.

Most of the independent catchers will be monitoring a much smaller list (maybe even one domain at a time)

Grant

aqls · Apr 19, 2006

If I knew that max99 (whoever you are) I'd be pm'ing you immediately to let you know what I'd found!

-aqls-

bb99 · Apr 19, 2006

max99 said:
Anyone know what kind of system is used by major dropcatchers to get email domain request to Nominet submitted faster than a TAG holding "scriptkiddy"? Surely their (the big player's) handicap is having to monitor thousands of names rather than, say, one or two hundred? How do they get around Nominet look-up restrictions. 432,000 look-ups a day is not much even if trying for just 100 names! Often wondered answers to these questions but oddly hardly ever discussed on the boards.

These questions are seldom discussed because, for many, it's a business and this sort of information is commercially sensitive. There's a hell of a lot more information about now than there was a year ago... which in turn is significantly more than was around a year before that. In my view, the best source of information is this forum. Go back through all the posts in this section of the forum and you will be enlightened

As a wise man once said to someone else on this forum (Rob was it?) - "A good catcher keeps his mouth shut".

If you want the best chance of getting a name, you need to work out on what day it's going to drop (there's plenty of info about this on this forum - most notably the little calendar thingy at the top!). That way you shouldn't be searching for hundreds of names on the DAC at any one time. You then need to prioritise - the less names you're checking at any one time, the more you're checking per second and the higher the chance you've got at catching.

Good luck