Devoted to Help Desk and Technical Support personnel and applications

I think The Who was ahead of their time when they sang the lyrics: Who are you?
Who, who, who, who?
I really wanna know
Who, who, who, who?

I was asked by a reader to explain why I considered WHOIS to be an important troubleshooting tool.  To some WHOIS is just a way to find out if a URL is already registered, but you really need to know how to use the information that “WhoIs” can give you.  For one you can find out if a caller is sending you on a wild goose chase.  The fastest, easiest way to find out if the user has goofed up the url when a website won’t come up is by running a whois.  They could be one letter off for all you know.  You will waste time if you are busy checking to see if it is a firewall issue before you know if the webpage exists. 

I have also used whois to get a phone number for support when I have a user who can’t login to a website. It is true that much of the whois data is now blocked in an effort to thwart data miners, but when you have four managers looking over your shoulder needing an answer, a whois check is worth a try.

You can also find out the server type.  Why is that important?  Well, if the site is running on an Apache server, you know that the webpage url is case sensitive.  Try going to this  link:  http://www.helpdesknotes.com/

2007/08/Advancement_4_tools_every_help.html it won’t work, because helpdesknotes.com is running on an Apache server.  I changed the “a” in advancement to a capital letter.  Now try this link: http://www.helpdesknotes.com/2007/08/advancement_4_tools_every_help.html  It works! 

What else can you do with whois information?  You can look up the DNS data if you are having problems viewing a webpage.  Maybe you are trying to troubleshoot connectivity problems on one of your companies websites.  You can even use Whois to troubleshoot email routing issues for a domain.  

Whois information can tell you if the registration recently expired.  I also saw a domain name get “hijacked” once, WhoIs was the first place I went.

Know any other uses for WhoIs?  Please share by making a comment below!