My Netquery Project partner, JMorris, has suggested that enhancing its Whois feature to permit multiple simultaneous lookups ("MultiWhois") might be of interest for web hosting and related purposes. This is to request wider input on that suggestion to assist me in guaging the level of actual interest. Keep in mind that each Netquery feature can be enabled or disabled by the site administrator.

I have have done some very preliminary work based on the standalone (SA) version of Netquery to permit assessment independently of any CMS. But the concept is just as easily applied to any of the CMS modules.

As an initial basis for comment by anyone interested, I've uploaded a SA_NETQUERY_X package at http://users.vianet.ca/rvirtue/tools/ It is crude, unpolished and currently limited to only three (3) simultaneous whois lookup requests. (The X stands for experimental and the coding, while fully functional, reflects that stage of development.) Before taking it any further, I wanted to get some initial reaction and feedback on the general concept.

As usual, the only difference between the .ZIP and .TAR.GZ downloads is that the former is preconfigured for Windows while the latter is preconfigured for UNIX/Linux systems. But either one can, of course, be reconfigured -- not that it matters as far as the MultiWhois feature is concerned.

Regards to all,
Richard Virtue

Another useful purpose for being able to perform multiple Whois queries is asset management. For example, if you own a large number of domains and you want to monitor when your domains expire, whether or not the contact information is correct, what name servers your domains are pointing to, whether or not someone has highjacked your domain and has altered information, and whether or not a transfer has been completed after the sale of a domain.

With modification, the MultiWhois feature could potentially be used for bulk registration of multiple domains. A particularly useful tool for web hosts and domain registrars.