My domain is offline, but WHOIS says it expires next year! Why?

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WHOIS is a great tool, though it does require some knowledge of how the registration system works between the Registry and the Registrars in order to get a clear picture of the true state of the domain.

In this situation, if the domain's status is "REGISTRAR-HOLD", "CLIENTHOLD", "REDEMPTIONPERIOD" or "PENDINGDELETE", the domain has expired. If you look at the anniversary date of the domain it will be sometime within the past 75 days.

The reason the date in WHOIS displays next year’s date is because of the way domains are maintained by the central domain Registry when they expire. Once a domain hits its expiration date, the following things happen:

- The domain has a "temporary auto renewal" made to it by most Registries, and the Registrar is charged for this renewal. Funds are _not_ taken from the Registrant (owner) of the domain or the Reseller to do this.
- The domain is put on Hold (either a CLIENTHOLD or a REGISTRAR-HOLD) by the Registrar in order to take the domain offline and give some indication to the domain owners that a renewal needs to be attended to since it wasn't made before the expiry date
- The domain is held for a duration of around 40 days, after which point OpenSRS submits a request to DELETE the domain to the Registry
- Rather than delete the domain immediately, the Registry will hold the domain for 30 days in a "Redemption Grace Period"

The expiration date may or may not change after the domain enters into the Redemption Grace Period. This depends on what type of domain it is:

- COM/NET - expiry date will revert to the original expiry when going into REDEMPTIONPERIOD
- ORG/INFO - Expiry date stays the same through the RGP period (one year in advance)
- BIZ/US - Date does not advance during the first 45 days

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