Andre, Randy, wrt handles we have to declare defeat, unfortunately. One of the last major (undeclared :-) battles we lost was the migration of data from the "InterNIC model" environment (IP addresses and gTLDs) into, eventually, the NSI domain stuff and the ARIN IP stuff. Not only was this the biggest case of handle and object duplication into 2 different regsitries (to my knowledge without an announcement being made or the victims being warned), but the then implicit convention of deriving Handle-"RegistryCode" suffixes (i.e. XY12-RIPE, AB89-APNIC) was broken by the invention or things like -NET -DOM -ROLE and the like. A while ago, there were a few ideas and proposals floating around (like using a DNS-like approach: WW144-RIPE.NET or WW144-NIC.AT), but as to my knowledge, no consensus was developing. Requiescat in pacem. Sigh. Btw, I'm really looking forward to the point in time when we'll see the first clash in registry names. That's going to be the beginning of the end of mirrors.... Wilfried.

given

whois -h whois.ripe.net dom.ain.de

returning <handle>-DENIC, so i then follow with

whois -h whois.ripe.net <handle>-DENIC

i can only conclude, givem the first quoted paragraph above, that the data must be manually entered in both databases or that ripe mirrors denic's database.

Seems like we need a referal meganisme for nic-handles? Regards, Andre --------------------------------------------------------------------------------