The WHOIS service can be used to check whether a national Internet domain name is available or not, and if not, who has already registered it. WHOIS is a publicly available collection of data on the users of domains registered in the Central Registry database of the .RS and .СРБ national Internet domains managed by RNIDS.
RNIDS makes the following data from the Central Registry database of the national Internet domains publicly available via the WHOIS service:
- domain name
- information on the registrant and the administrative and technical contacts, only if the registrant is a legal entitity and sole proprietorship
- date and time of registration of the domain name
- date and time of the last change made to the domain name registration information
- date and time of expiry of the domain name registration
- name of the accredited registrar providing registration services for the domain name
- current status of the domain name (active, deactivated, subject to dispute etc.)
- information on the DNS servers and other technical information relating to the domain name.
Information on the registrant and the administrative and technical contacts made available by RNIDS via the WHOIS service comprises are: name (business name), registered address and corporate registration number for legal entities and sole proprietorships.
The WHOIS service is available through RNIDS’ web sites, or via the special WHOIS protocol (using the RFC3912 standard).
There are two forms of the WHOIS service for the national Internet domains .RS and .СРБ:
- Querying data on registered domain names – rnids.rs/whois
this returns data on individual domain names in the form of a web page, a PDF file or in original TXT form
- Checking availability of domain names – domen.rs/whois
this returns results in all five subdomains simultaneously, and if the requested domain name is valid and available, the user is given a link to the list of accredited registrars for the .RS and .СРБ domains