Can whois provide mail servers

Yes, the WHOIS protocol can provide information about mail servers, also known as Mail Exchanger (MX) records. WHOIS is a protocol used to query databases that store information about domain names, IP addresses, and other internet-related data.

When you perform a WHOIS lookup, you can typically retrieve information about the domain name, including:

  1. Domain name owner (registrant)
  2. Domain name administrator (admin)
  3. Domain name technical contact (tech)
  4. Domain name billing contact (billing)
  5. Domain name creation and expiration dates
  6. Domain name status (e.g., active, suspended, expired)
  7. Mail servers (MX records)

Mail servers, or MX records, are used to route email messages to the correct mail server for a domain. The WHOIS protocol can provide information about the mail servers associated with a domain, including:

  1. Priority (a numerical value indicating the order in which mail servers are tried)
  2. Mail server hostname (the hostname of the mail server)
  3. Mail server IP address (the IP address of the mail server)

To retrieve mail server information using WHOIS, you can use a WHOIS client or a web-based WHOIS lookup tool. Here's an example of how to use the whois command-line tool to retrieve mail server information:

whois example.com

This command will retrieve information about the domain example.com, including the mail servers associated with the domain. The output may look something like this:

...
Mail server: mx1.example.com
Priority: 10
Mail server: mx2.example.com
Priority: 20
...

Keep in mind that not all WHOIS servers provide mail server information, and the availability of this information may vary depending on the registrar or registry. Additionally, some registrars may not provide public WHOIS access, in which case you may need to contact them directly to obtain the information you need.