>Is there a way to determine when the InterNIC will release "onhold" domains?
>Any way to make them do a particular domain any faster?
Nope -- they're completely random about it. My experience is between 30
and 120 days, at random, which is why I devised my NT Scheduler job to
"watch" such domains as needed.
>Now the domain is back "onhold" again and I'm dying to get it back (and pay
>for it this time) but I would like to know (or some kind of idea) what the
>InterNIC's timelines are on releasing these domains back to the public. Why
>did only one of the possible six get released? Some of the ones I've got
>have been "on hold" for almost a year.
Internic is sometimes rather clueless about that. Their billing system
isn't the greatest, and my guess is that putting "On Hold" domains back to
available status requires human intervention, and is not automated.
>I'm afraid to ask the InterNIC due to the fact they might go ahead and
>release the rest of 'em as well.
Get a copy of that WHOIS command line thing, and generate an NT event that
does something like what I wrote below:
c:
cd \winnt\util
del ddd
del size
if exist done2.txt goto :end
REM if we've already registered it twice, don't bother again
:top
whois iwantthisdomain.com > ddd
grep "system load is" ddd > size
REM if told system load is too busy, try again -- we can tell
REM by the size of the resulting "grep" -- freeware GRADE12.EXE checks
REM file size and returns errorlevel. Below, we check to see if file
REM size is one byte or greater (meaning that "system load" was found),
REM and if it was found, we go back to try again....
grade12\grade size 1
if errorlevel 1 goto :top
REM If we get here, system load was not too busy
grep "No match for" ddd > size
grade12\grade size 1
if errorlevel 1 goto :bingo
REM If we get here, domain still exists, still on hold
goto :end
:bingo
REM AIYAH! Register that puppy!
blat app.txt -t hostmaster@internic.net -s "NEW DOMAIN (iwantthisdomain.com)"
blat app.txt -t self@self.com -s "NEW DOMAIN (iwantthisdomain.com)"
REM Blat is a shareware CLU to send a file as Email. STFW.
REM app.txt is a pre-prepared Internic reg form.
if exist done1.txt ren done1.txt done2.txt
echo "Done Once" > done1.txt
REM If we're able to register it, make sure we don't "flood"
REM Internic -- just do it twice to be sure, then quit. We'll
REM keep track of how often we've blatted Internic via drop files.
:end
I used the above batch file in conjunction with the WINNT "at" command to
run that batch file every 10 minutes between 2 am and 9 am (when the
internic database updates are most likely) and every 30 minutes during
other times. I was out of town on a weekend when the domain actually was
released back to the available pool, but I had it registered within 10
minutes of the Internic update. The only way anyone would have been able
to nick it before I got there would have been to either been on a one
minute check cycle, or to have "guessed" the date of release, and put in an
app prior to the database update that day, but which got processed by
Internic AFTER the update happened (not likely to happen).
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