WHOIS · RDAP · Domain Intelligence
Technical Guides & Knowledge Base
30 bilingual articles on RDAP, IANA bootstrap, API integration, security workflows, and self-hosting—optimized for search and practical engineering.
API
WHOIS JSON API Integration Guide
REST design, error models, cache keys, and multi-source merge.
Practical cURL RDAP Examples
cURL commands for domain, IP, and ASN RDAP queries.
Python RDAP Automation Starter
requests, bootstrap caching, and referral merge patterns.
Domain Intelligence API Design
Unified query params, normalized output, protocol fallback.
Business
DNS
Reading Authoritative Nameservers from RDAP
nameservers objects, glue records, and DNS ops use cases.
IDN Domains and RDAP unicodeName
Punycode, unicodeName fields, and multilingual lookups.
Public Suffix List Guide
How PSL powers registrable domain boundaries and suffix indexes.
DNS Records vs WHOIS Data
When to query DNS vs RDAP—resolution vs registration.
Engineering
RDAP Rate Limits and 429 Backoff
Per-registry throttling, Retry-After, and caching design.
RDAP Error Handling
Normalize 404, 429, 5xx and RDAP error objects.
Caching WHOIS/RDAP Results
TTL design, Redis tiers, and negative caching.
WHOIS Text Parsing Pitfalls
Multilingual fields, folded lines, disclaimers, encodings.
Lookups
Policy
Protocols
RDAP vs WHOIS: What Developers Need in 2026
Compare RDAP and WHOIS protocols, response formats, bootstrap discovery, and the ICANN transition—choose the right domain lookup stack.
RDAP JSON Response Structure (RFC 9083)
Engineering guide to RDAP domain objects—events, status, vcardArray, links, and referral patterns.
IANA RDAP Bootstrap Discovery (RFC 9224)
Locate RDAP servers per TLD, IP, or ASN using IANA bootstrap files and local indexing strategies.
WHOIS Port 43 Basics
Query syntax, text formats, and parsing challenges of legacy WHOIS.
Registries
Thin vs Thick Registries: Why RDAP Needs a Second Hop
Why .com registrant data lives on registrar RDAP servers and how to merge registry + registrar responses.
RDAP Registrar Referral Chains
Engineering patterns for multi-hop registry → registrar RDAP links.
Domain Lifecycle & Expiration
Reading registration phases from RDAP events and status.
Registrar vs Registry Roles
ICANN ecosystem roles and data ownership.
ccTLD vs gTLD RDAP Coverage
Practical RDAP support gaps across TLD types.