title: Strategies to reduce the whois query burden
body: <p>I have been working on operations with strings in a recent 100 level CompSci course.
  I got the very "original" idea that I might write up a simple domain name generator/checker.</p>
  
  <p>So I did a little homework and discovered that the various whois servers understandably limit the number of queries allowed.</p>
  
  <p>So, I decided to first check for a DNS boolean. If no records are found I then check a MySQL database to make sure the same query hasn't been sent recently.  If it hasn't I fire off a whois query with PHP using fsockopen.  So, I was just getting ready to finish up my little script and upload it from my development server to my production server and I found some sites suggesting that various whois servers limit the queries to only 1,000.</p>
  
  <p>My question:</p>
  
  <p>Am I approaching this appropriately?
  The simple math suggests that only 10 users each checking out 10 searches each search providing only 10 results (10**3) might result in exceeding the limit and a temporary ban.</p>
  
  <p>Are there any methods of doing bulk queries to the whois server?</p>
  
  <p>Are other sites using some form of client-side javascript query or server-side proxy?
  I found another similar question here at stackoverflow suggesting that *NIX systems have access to a terminal command that has no limits.  Other questions I have found deal with parsing the data - which is not a concern of mine.</p>
  
  <p>I understand that this is a vague question.  I do not want to inappropriately burden the whois servers. I do not expect, nor want, a ready-made code solution.  A basic discussion of alternative programmatic strategies to go about this would make me a very satisfied friend :)  Anyone have a keyword or two with which I can continue my research?</p>