On DNS; Registrar -vs- Hosts -vs- Registry Operators

4 min readJan 14, 2021

the question is the basic terminology behind domain name services: who are central organizations taking care of the domain name registry; who are registrarsl who are hosts

… and how to get this information without leaving VSCode, ideally (i.e. with a powershell script and some free-tier of an dedicated web service)

1. registrars VS hosts vs registry operators

DOMAIN REGISTRAR is the subject where domain names are finally purchased
DNS HOST is the service/server authoritative for hosting your DNS records
there are hosting providers that offer domain registration
there are registrars that offer DNS hosting, but the two should not be confused
selecting a domain name is the first step you make when building a web site
this semantical layer of the internet, technically, computers are connected with ip addresses
registration means going through

Purchase a domain from DNS REGISTRAR, which is a company/subject that directly deals with the REGISTRY OPERATORS FOR THE TOP LEVEL DOMAIN
Registrar makes sure you own the domain by registering it to you with registry operators
You/Registrar need to select a DNS host — at Registrar level you specify the Name Servers hosting your information

4. DNS host stores the ZONE FILE containing all the DNS records about your DOMAIN. If the example below would have a different registrar and host, the interface would differ there.

the global list of domain names is managed by IANA (International Assigned Numbers Authority)

2. IANA

IANA is a department of ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) a nonprofit running the root zone management in the DNS
whois command is querying the domain name registry
but the registrar is too up in the hierarchy to the common customers
usually, a domain name is purchased through a WEB HOSTING PROVIDER that does the work for them and register a domain through the registries on customer’s behalf
DNS HOST are servers hosted by DNS HOSTING PROVIDERS and these servers authoritatively respond for your domain
Sometimes, registrars also offer DNS hosting, but it should not be confused
DNS Host is mentioned by names of nameservers in the NAMESERVERS part of the whois lookup

3. whois as a protocol

whois is a query and response protocol for querying DBs storing registered users/assignees of internet resources (domain names, IP address blocks)
whois is a standard drafted by the internet society
whois gets you info on the registrar-level
nslookup gets you info on the dns-host level (zone file informatino)
documented in RFC 3912 — WHOIS Protocol Specification

4. example: whois in terminal

the following script is creating and parsing a whois request
note: it is relying on jsonwhois.io where you need to register to get your own $apiKey

<# TODO: BRANCH BASED ON THE POWERSHELL VERSION, use invoke-webrequest for non-posh-core #>param(
    [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)][string]$domainName,
    [string]$apiKey = "JKS2XytCLNfkYg7i490AnSDo4QZ74lxn"
)
$domainIntro = @"_|___|__                                                
___|___|     mrPaul's WHOIS in Terminal                   
_|___|__                                                
___|___|___|___|___|___|___|___|___|___|___|___|__                    
_|___|___|___|___|___|___|___|___|___|___|___|___|                    "@$domainInfo = curl "https://api.jsonwhois.io/whois/domain?key=$apiKey&domain=$domainName" | ConvertFrom-Json
Write-Host $domainIntro -ForegroundColor CyanWrite-Host "1. THE BASICS" -ForegroundColor Cyan
$domainInfo.result | Select-Object name, created, changed, expires, dnssec, registered | Format-ListWrite-Host "2. REGISTRAR" -ForegroundColor Cyan
$domainInfo.result.registrar | Format-ListWrite-Host "3. NAMESERVERS`n" -ForegroundColor Cyan
$domainInfo.result.nameservers | Format-List | Write-Host "`n"

5. demo

whoiscmdlet whois.ps1 at command pipeline position 1
Supply values for the following parameters:
domainName: amazon.com
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100   850  100   850    0     0    850      0  0:00:01 --:--:--  0:00:01  1158_|___|__                                                
___|___|     mrPaul's WHOIS in Terminal                   
_|___|__                                                
___|___|___|___|___|___|___|___|___|___|___|___|__                    
_|___|___|___|___|___|___|___|___|___|___|___|___|                    1. THE BASICSname       : amazon.com
created    : 1994-11-01 05:00:00
changed    : 2019-05-07 20:09:37
expires    : 2024-10-31 04:00:00
dnssec     : True
registered : True
2. REGISTRARid    : 292
name  : MarkMonitor Inc.
email :
url   :
3. NAMESERVERS
NS1.P31.DYNECT.NET
NS2.P31.DYNECT.NET
NS3.P31.DYNECT.NET
NS4.P31.DYNECT.NET
PDNS1.ULTRADNS.NET
PDNS6.ULTRADNS.CO.UK