WDH-072 Websites, Domains & Internet Infrastructure
How can I tell who hosted a website in the past?¶
Reconstruct the domain’s historic DNS and infrastructure, then trace the provider and customer assignment for the relevant period.
What to do¶
Useful sources include historic DNS, nameservers, prior IPs, certificate records, CDN or proxy configuration, registrar changes, invoices, support records, backups, migrations and provider assignment data. Build a dated timeline.
Key takeaway
Current hosting shows only the present position; historic attribution requires period-specific records.