I believe that whois does a wildcard search for all domains known to start with microsoft.com, and some funny people registered subdomains under their own domains that start with microsoft.com. But maybe I'm wrong :-)
Take a look at my response upthread - basically, they're not sub domains, they're arbitrarily registered name server entries to provide glue to other lookups. The Whois record is just the side effect
These are glue records. If a nameserver is under the domain name he is authoritative for, it has to be declared to the registry with its IP address as to avoid circular dependency, ie:
* Q: What is the nameserver for bleh.blih ?
* A: ns.bleh.blih
* Q: Thank you fine sir. What is the ip for ns.bleh.blih ?
* A: Ask nameserver of bleh.blih.
* Q: But I just...
And so on. Such declared hostname/ip nameservers are called glue records.
Whois databases search glue records too (and only return a limited number), and this is what you see here.
Comments
Interesting. Can someone explain what is happening here?
I believe that whois does a wildcard search for all domains known to start with microsoft.com, and some funny people registered subdomains under their own domains that start with microsoft.com. But maybe I'm wrong :-)
OK. Next question - why does the verisign whois server know about arbitarily nested subdomains, instead of only top-level registrations?
Take a look at my response upthread - basically, they're not sub domains, they're arbitrarily registered name server entries to provide glue to other lookups. The Whois record is just the side effect
Correct, you can do an exact match using whois 'domain microsoft.com'
Ah yes, same applies to facebook.com and many others.
These are glue records. If a nameserver is under the domain name he is authoritative for, it has to be declared to the registry with its IP address as to avoid circular dependency, ie:
* Q: What is the nameserver for bleh.blih ? * A: ns.bleh.blih * Q: Thank you fine sir. What is the ip for ns.bleh.blih ? * A: Ask nameserver of bleh.blih. * Q: But I just...
And so on. Such declared hostname/ip nameservers are called glue records.
Whois databases search glue records too (and only return a limited number), and this is what you see here.