Whois and DAS (Domain Availability Service)

Whois

The Whois service provides a way for the public to lookup information about registered data.

To protect the data from possible abuse, the Whois service enforces a rate limitation mechanism, which will limit the possibility for a client to do a large number of requests within a short period of time.

DAS (Domain Availabilty Service)

The DAS provides a way for the public to check whether a domain can be registered. There may be three answers to an input query:

• If a domain can be registered, the answer is that the domain is available.
• If a domain is already registered, the answer is that the domain is already delegated, which means that it is already registered.
• If the domain cannot be registered of some particular reason, the answer is that the domain can not be registered.

The DAS service enforces a lower rate limitation than the Whois.