There are several possible reasons:
- Your connection to the Internet is too slow or "fuzzy," which usually happens when you have a low quality telephone line. Try to reconnect to your ISP.
- The Whois server the program is connecting to is down. SmartWhois obtains information from official whois databases, and these databases are not in our control. So you'll have to wait until the server is up and running again, which normally doesn't take long.
- If you enabled IP address/hostname caching in the Options, the program might fail to connect to a Whois server if its IP address has recently changed. Click Clear Cache in Settings => Options => Cache => DNSh.
- Your network environment does not permit outbound TCP connections on ports 43 and 80. This is often the case when you don't have direct Internet access, e.g. you are behind a corporate firewall, or if you installed a personal firewall with incorrectly configured packet-blocking rules.
