Deletion of German domains

>>>>> "mn" == mike norris <mike.norris at heanet.ie> writes:
> What ever happened to the auto-referral mechanism, whereby a query
> about a moved object could be referred onward to the appropriate
> whois server?

Such a mechanism has been in place for a while.  The domains under .ch
have been using it since December 1998.

	$ whois -h whois.ripe.net '-r -R -T domain ch' 
        [...]
	domain:      ch
	[...]
	refer:       SIMPLE whois.nic.ch
	changed:     gottsponer at switch.ch 19981223

In the meantime there has been an improved version of the referral
mechanism which provides the IP address (or hostname?) of the original
requestor to the delegated Whois server, which can be useful for
logging/rate limiting purposes.  It's certainly documented somewhere
on the RIPE Web server.
-- 
Simon Leinen				       simon at babar.switch.ch
SWITCH				   http://www.switch.ch/misc/leinen/

	    Who is General Failure & why's he reading my disk?