I have a guy purchasing domains for me. How long does it take allwhois.com and other domain registration databases to find the data that a domain is no longer available. I know that dns can take 48-72 hours, does the domain availbility databases take this long too?

Originally posted by hump999
I have a guy purchasing domains for me. How long does it take allwhois.com and other domain registration databases to find the data that a domain is no longer available. I know that dns can take 48-72 hours, does the domain availbility databases take this long too?

The Availability database usually updates INSTANTLY. I have verified this in the past about 2 minutes after registering a Domain with RegisterFLY.com and then trying it again at NetworkSolutions... 2 minutes after registration, the name was no longer available anywhere.

My 2 Cents/

The whois database is not the place where domain availability is checked.

When domains are registered, they are immediately unavailable to be registered by anyone else.

Where you can be fooled however is when domain registration is not real time. There are registrars who batch together registrations or manually process them and as such introduce a delay between when you purchase and when the domain is actually registered.

The whois database can take many days to reflect a registered domain.

-t