NSI Bulletin 098-010 | Update on Whois

[David H. Holtzman]

Network Solutions has been seeing increased traffic on whois 
in the last few months.  The number of queries has approximately
doubled each month since June.  At this time, 40% of our inbound
http traffic is whois related.  In an attempt to alleviate some 
of the load on the servers, we have taken the following steps:

    - Some of the worst offenders (single site, large number of accesses) will 
be blocked from access starting this week
    - Replication of the whois data will be started earlier in the evening to 
allow for more timely updates
    - Existing whois hosts have had processor and memory upgrades
    - Local file storage is now being used vice NFS
    - Medium-term and long-term development efforts are underway to redesign 
whois for optimal performance.  This includes in-memory searches, better 
parsing and dynamic updates obviating the need for large daily data movements.


_____________________________________
David H. Holtzman (dholtz@internic.net)
Sr Vice President of Engineering
Network Solutions, Inc.