Notes for Registrars

If a current customer of ours is intending on transferring a domain from our accreditation to yours, you may need to query our WHOIS server for contact details. Here we outline how to do this, how to parse contact information from our WHOIS server, what to do if you hit query limits, and what to do if you find you are unable to connect to our WHOIS server.

Querying our WHOIS server

Our WHOIS server runs on whois.blacknight.com. If you run a POSIX-compatible system such as Linux, *BSD, Solaris, or MacOS, you can query it from the command line as follows:

$ whois -h whois.blacknight.com example.com

Output format

Our WHOIS server responds using the Registration Data Directory Service (WHOIS) Specification of the 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement.

Query limits

Please see our notes on query limits if you are having difficulty querying our WHOIS server.

Failed queries

Very occasionally, our WHOIS server may be momentarily down due to an upgrade in progress and your connection may be refused. If this is so, please wait five minutes then retry your query.