.is WHOIS Lookup
.is is the country-code extension of Iceland, administered by ISNIC. Look up a .is address and see what the record contains.
- 1.494 extensions
- IANA 1601 ICANN accredited
- 2 protocols — RDAP and WHOIS
Your IP address 216.73.216.31
.is WHOIS Lookup: Fields of an Icelandic Record
.is is the country-code extension of Iceland, delegated into the root zone on 18 November 1987 and operated by ISNIC. Queries are answered by whois.isnic.is on port 43, and in our measurement on 12 August 2026 the reply carried sixteen distinct labels. The extension also runs an RDAP endpoint at rdap.isnic.is, and the zone carries a DS record in the root.
The two channels name the same expiry date differently. On port 43 the date is written under a plain expires label; in the RDAP reply the same information arrives as an event called soft expiration. The wording is not accidental: with its own vocabulary the registry is saying that this date is not a hard cut-off after which the name is gone. When you see the expiry date of a .is address, read it as the threshold at which the record needs attention rather than as its last day.
The second half of the reply is the identity side, and ISNIC keeps it open. Five separate handles are listed — registrant, administrative, technical, zone and billing — and each handle later opens into a block carrying an address, a phone number and an email. Our result screen fills six fields: the domain name, the creation and expiry dates, the registrant, the name servers and the DNSSEC state. Run a .is lookup and compare the expiry date with the name it carries in the raw reply. To see the handle pattern in another European extension, visit .at WHOIS lookup; for an unsigned country extension, .to WHOIS lookup.
About the .is extension
- Extension
- .is
- WHOIS server
- whois.isnic.is
- RDAP endpoint
- https://rdap.isnic.is/rdap
- Registry
- ISNIC — Internet á Íslandi hf.
- Delegated
- 18 November 1987
- Name of the expiry event
- soft expiration in RDAP, expires on port 43 (12 August 2026)
- Contact roles
- Registrant, administrative, technical, zone and billing — five separate handles
- Measured sample
- isnic.is: registered 5 September 2000, expires 5 September 2027
WHOIS FAQ
What does soft expiration mean in a .is record?
It is the name the expiry date carries as an event in the RDAP reply. In our measurement on 12 August 2026, the ISNIC endpoint returned registration, last changed and soft expiration events. The adjective in that name reports that the date is a threshold rather than a definitive closure. In practice the safe reading is this: once the date has passed, the only sound assumption about the address is that the record awaits attention, not that it has been deleted.
Why is the .is expiry date written differently per channel?
Because the two protocols use different vocabularies. A port 43 reply writes fields under plain labels and uses expires for the end date; RDAP lists dates as event records and states the type of each event separately, which here is soft expiration. The date is the same date; only the naming changes. Reading both channels together also shows you how the registry itself regards that date.
Does an .is WHOIS lookup show the registrant?
It does. The reply first gives a handle for the registrant and then, further down the same output, opens the block that handle refers to: the name, address, phone number and email sit in that block. In the 12 August 2026 measurement the RDAP side showed a contact name as well. Our result screen fills the registrant field from this data, so for this extension the question of identity is answered at registry level.
How are the handles in an .is record read?
Each handle is the identifier of a contact object, and the role lines near the start of the reply point at those identifiers. The record we measured carried five roles: registrant, administrative, technical, zone and billing. The same handle can repeat across several roles, which shows that one organisation covers several duties at once. Working out which role points at which identifier first makes the blocks much easier to read.
How does the DNSSEC state arrive for .is domains?
The reply carries a dedicated dnssec field, and in the record we measured its value was a signed delegation. The extension itself is signed too: we confirmed a DS record for .is in the root zone in the measurement of 12 August 2026. With both in place the chain is complete, which means a resolver can validate all the way from the root down to the address. Our result screen reports the state of the individual name as its own field.
How does an available .is name look in a lookup?
As a reply with no record block. In our measurement a name that was not registered drew no handle or date lines from the server, and the result screen marked it as available. Availability is reliable for this extension. Results that look available are cached for five minutes and registered ones for six hours, and that short window keeps a freshly registered name from appearing free for long.