Fast whois lookup in PHP?

I'm writing a new whois lookup in PHP. I want to look up multiple variations on a name and return the results. I'm using a simple PHP exec to call the whois on the server. The problem is, looking up 100+ names can take a few minutes.

How do services like NameBoy do it? I put in a couple of words there and get the .com, .net, .org, and .info results for dozens of variations (so hundreds of results) in a second or so. My guess is they have their own internal database of domain names, so they don't have to query a third-party server like whois.crsnic.net.

What's the fastest way to look up whether a domain is available or not from a PHP script?

 

 

 

 

Top