Building a drop tool

[ABetterMall]

I'm considering building a new tool to snag dropped domains. What would be the quickest way to find out when a .com domain drops? My hunch would be a WhoIs against Network Solution's name servers, but I'd imagine they wouldn't take to kindly to polling every second or so. Are there any services that can provide the data in (near) real time?

[sdsinc]

If you want to compete with the dropcatchers then you need an army of registrars to gain direct (real time) access to the registry.
Otherwise you can play with registrar APIs, but that will work only for domains that are not backordered with the dropcatchers. But it's faster than handregs though. Needless to say, you have zero chance of catching anything premium such as dropping LLL.com.

[ABetterMall]

I'm not planning on competing for LLL.com's, but I would like to at least stand a small chance on beating a drop service on domains in less demand. Are there any others that allow programmatic registration besides Enom and Moniker?

[sdsinc]

Dynadot, Directi, godaddy and quite a few others do have an API available.
But there are limitations too - bandwidth capped, polling limits etc.