When things break, one thing any competent network admin does is check the DNS to make sure something isn't wrong. If that doesn't seem broken, one immediately checks whois/RDDS to see whether what's in the DNS is what's _supposed_ to be there. I admit to being a newbie to the Internet, since I didn't join it until some time in the 1990s, but as near as I can tell this is what people have _always_ done to diagonose problems.
Definitely not disagreeing with the principle - yes it's more-or-less what sysadmins doing diagnostics have always done - although I think you missed the very first step which is * ask when the user last fiddled with it (not ever taking their first answer) Where I see the methodology differing slightly is the "check whois" part Now it's _probably_ due to the type of business we are in - instead of "look at whois" (which was for many years a part of the process) as a Registrar that became * check our own systems * query the registry Or quite often when guiding people through the same what-is-broken checks swapping some of that for * check with your registrar The RDS part of the checking has for a long time in my experience been declining in usefulness - often even diverting onto looking at non-exist-problems at the expense of dealing with the actual issue What you said about "to see whether what's in the DNS is what's _supposed_ to be there" is 100% correct ! I just think with the real disconnect between "the system that puts it in the tld zone" and "the system that displays stuff to the public" at registrars/registries [ which is why we have "you'll update the whois with T period" sections in ICANN contracts ] it's the wrong thing to be using to verify things. It's not the "end of the world" to me either way
note, the reason that a "centralized" system that holds all the data for all registries is as astonishingly bad idea, because it creates yet a new data sync problem that cannot be checked.)
Agreed, I'm not a fan of that idea. Neither am I a fan of the current com/net whois-referral system rather than the details per domain being at the actual registry for that TLD because of the data dupe/sync/accuracy/availability issues (plus making transfers easier etc)
There are lots of other uses of the current whois system that I think are bogus (I think, for instance, that the encroachment of intellectual property claims on the DNS has been an unmitigated disaster for the Internet). But this technical use is the basic point of the RDS facility, and I think it is plainly useful.
I'm not disagreeing it has _been_ useful - I just don't see it as having remained as useful / reliable as it was in back when we could carry a list of all the domain names in existence in a lever arch binder :) Rob --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus