This particular post was listed under both Program Updates and Drop Catching Tips because both topics will really come into play here. If you plan on using DesktopCatcher (or any other script/application) to drop catch domain names into Internet.bs then you should read this post to get a better understanding of the limits this company has in place. Internet.bs really could not be considered “drop catching friendly” like DynaDot or NameSilo are. They have pretty strict limits that will prevent you from running the API for long periods of time. Lets take a look at the limits put into place below.

Internet.bs – The people at Internet.bs award you with more API requests depending on the number of names you have registered with them (not including pending transfers or changes). They will allow a total of 3000 requests per month, plus 3 times the number of domains you have in your account. So, if you have 5 domains registered with Internet.bs then you would be allowed a total of 3000+(3*5) – or 3015 API requests each month. Once you reach this limit you will be cut off and no longer allowed to perform that API command until the new month begins. If you were to calculate 3000 against one request sent each second then you would see that this number is very low. Running the Internet.bs API for longer than 1 hour in 1 day could use up your entire limit for the month.

The Solution

So how do you overcome the limits with Internet.bs? How can you still take advantage of using their API for drop catching and manage to keep yourself from getting banned or in any kind of trouble with the them? It’s possible – but it does take some extra work.

Solution A – The first solution to this problem would be to simply avoid this registrar. DesktopCatcher currently has support for ResellerClub, DynaDot and NameSilo whom do not have any limits on how many attempts you can send per day or per month. This solution is an easy way to avoid the situation entirely, but will give you less registrars making those attempts to catch your domains.

Solution B (Recommended) – The newest update for DesktopCatcher (version 1.6) has counters put into place to help combat the issues. The Internet.bs API details now has an option to set the API Request Limit. This will limit the number of requests sent to the Internet.bs API before automatically stopping the thread. If the API Request Limit is set to 300 then DesktopCatcher will automatically stop using the Internet.bs thread once 300 requests have been sent (although your other selected registrars will keep going as normal). You will also be alerted of this inside the Log box. Along with that, once you select the Internet.bs API box a small counter will appear above it. Each time an API request is made the counter will work its way down until you hit zero for the month. Once you hit zero the Internet.bs thread will also automatically stop and alert you inside the Log box. The counter is automatically set on the first of each month so you will always be able to track where you’re at on any day.

This was probably allot of information to take in and if you don’t plan on running the Internet.bs API it won’t effect you. However, if you DO plan on running them then I would consider re-reading this post one or two more times. Try to get a good understanding of how these limits work. If you still have any questions then please use the Contact option to get in touch with us!