Domain expiry

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A registered domain, read from its registry over RDAP: the days left before it expires, a hold that takes it out of the DNS, a redemption period, its registrar and whether its delegation is signed with DNSSEC.

RDAP is the successor of WHOIS: the same registration data, as JSON, with a standard format across registries. DumbMonit finds the registry of the extension in the IANA RDAP bootstrap file (https://data.iana.org/rdap/dns.json, read at most once a day), then asks it /domain/example.com. No credential is needed, and nothing but the registration of the domain is asked.

Two failures are worth watching besides the expiry date itself. A domain in clientHold or serverHold has been taken out of the DNS by the registrar or the registry, usually over an unpaid invoice or a contact address that was never verified: every site and mailbox under it stops at once. A domain in redemptionPeriod or pendingDelete has already expired and will be released unless it is restored, at a price.

Network ports to open

From the DumbMonit server (or its relay agent) to the device:

Port	Protocol	Purpose
443	TCP	RDAP query to the registry and to the IANA (HTTPS)

What it watches

All metrics are prefixed dumbmonit_domain_.

Metric	What	Labels
`expiry_days`	days left before expiry, fractional; negative once expired
`expiry_timestamp_seconds`	the expiry date, in Unix seconds
`expiry_published`	0 when the registry does not publish the expiry date
`on_hold`	1 in `clientHold` or `serverHold`
`redemption`	1 in `redemptionPeriod`, `pendingDelete` or `pendingRestore`
`status`	value 1, one series per status code, in EPP form (`clientTransferProhibited`)	`status`
`registrar_info`	value 1	`registrar`
`dnssec`	1 when the delegation is signed
`rdap_ok`	0 when the last query to the registry failed and an earlier answer is shown
`rdap_age_seconds`	age of the answer shown

The registry is asked once per Refresh interval (12 hours by default); in between, the days left are recomputed at every check. When the registry does not answer, the last answer is still used for up to seven days, with rdap_ok at 0, so a registry outage does not look like a domain problem.

The built-in rules that apply: Domain expiring (under 30 days), Domain about to expire (under 7 days or expired), Domain on hold, Domain in redemption, plus Monitor unreachable.

The monitor page

The panel above the charts reads what the probe stored; opening the page never queries the registry. It says the expiry date and the days left, the status codes (or the hold and redemption in a sentence), the registrar and DNSSEC, and whether the last query to the registry failed.

Watch a domain’s registration

Enter the registered domain, for example “example.com”, not a name under it such as www.example.com.
For an extension the IANA does not list, such as .ch, set “RDAP server” to the registry’s address.
```
https://rdap.nic.ch/
```

No credential is needed: RDAP, the successor of WHOIS, is public. DumbMonit finds the registry of the extension in the IANA RDAP bootstrap file, then asks it for the expiry date, the status codes and the registrar, twice a day by default; a shorter Refresh interval gains nothing. An extension whose registry runs no public RDAP service cannot be watched. Some registries do not publish the expiry date (.ch is one): DumbMonit then says so, and still watches the status codes. It warns 30 days before expiry, raises it 7 days before, and alerts at once on a hold or a redemption period.

Vendor documentation: https://www.icann.org/rdap

A domain the registry does not know (a subdomain, a typo, or a domain that was deleted) is reported as a configuration error, not as an outage. Names with accents are accepted and asked in their ASCII form (xn--…).

Credentials

None: RDAP is public.

Address: the registered domain (example.com); a pasted URL is reduced to its host name. Options: RDAP server (empty: found through IANA), Refresh interval (12 hours, from 1 to 168) and request timeout (10 s). The check interval of the monitor itself can stay at its default: it only recomputes the days left between two queries to the registry.