Querying root for lists of a nameservers gTLD zones.

[Charles Cala]

--- nocturnal <nocturnal at swehack.se> wrote:
> In a recent e-mail conversation with a person i was shown that it is 
> possible to query the root nameservers for lists of all .com .net .org 
> .biz .info domains 

that is not how root name servers work.
get http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/dns5/
and see how DNS works.

the root zone file can be found here
ftp://rs.internic.net/domain/
http://www.isoc.org/briefings/020/zonefile.shtml
http://www.internic.net/zones/root.zone

it tells you where to go to find the
.edu .com .mil .org etal servers.
from those servers it was once possible to 
transfer the zone files, but now that is
nolonger a for shure thing.

an example of one such listing is
http://www.internic.net/zones/edu.zone

if you have the files its simple.


> that point to a certain nameserver without having 
> much background information except for the host of the nameserver. 

whois servers can do that...

http://www.netdemon.net/tutorials/whois.txt
----------start quote----------
This is the part we're interested in.  Now, use the SERVER command to see
all the domains being hosted (in net.demon, you can use the right-click
menu and choose "new Server Whois")

  >SERVER ACCESSCOM-HST

This will show a list of all the domains being hosted there (up to 50):
---------end quote------------

> snip < 
> Everyone i have asked have told me that this is impossible to do, i'm 
> hoping someone on this list can either confirm that it is possible or 
> show me how he did this. 
> snip <

it is possibe to write a script that will automate the tasks,
gather up the info, sort the data, and querry the right sources.