How do I find the list of current active (and onhold) domain names?
Network solutions have blocked the use of host -l feature to list domains.
However people are still selling expired domain list. I assume they do that by 
comparing the com net org root zone for today and yesterday and pick out the 
missing ones.   Please advice on how to obtain the latest .com .net .org list 
of current and on hold domains (should be free).

Hello,

I feel your pain. I used to go through a process much like yours, but
the rules of the game changed a while back. It made it harder to find
out what was deleted vs. what was put on hold.

The best tool I have found for doing this is Deleted Domains.
http://www.deleteddomains.com

Every 24 hours they update their database doing the necessary
comparisons among zone files for .com, .org and .net. They then put
this into an an online database.

You can use their POWER SEARCH to limit the domains to deleted/onhold,
number of characters and inclusion of hyphens or numbers. This is an
excellent tool for nailing down terms:
http://www.deleteddomains.com/search.shtml?cid=16377-12756

As for finding out the exact domains that are dropped or on hold,
they've opened up their site to allow you to look at the newest
deletions. They break out the deleted and onhold domains into .COM,
.NET and .ORG and then into categories of 2-10 letters. It's amazing
and accomplishes everything you need to look at the files.
http://www.deleteddomains.com/dellist.shtml?cid=16377-12756

This solution shows you the latest domains that are deleted or placed
onhold and it's free.

Sources used: 
personal knowledge

Thanks,
pgrote-ga

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Request for Answer Clarification by imi-ga on 15 Jun 2002 23:52 PDT

Please advice web site / ftp server that provides public .com .net
.org ** LIST** so we can start a service like deletedomains.com  

The user responded that is not related to the question.  The question
asked where to find the list of .com .net .org master zone so we can
compile expired list service. the reply is to tell us to use our
potential competitor's service instead.
Not only that, the responder tried to abuse our intelligence by
sending us unrelated answer after someone responded with relevent
procedure in the  comment field.
Please either issue a refund or credit it to the person that left the
answer in the comment field.

Totally non related to the question. the question is how to get the
list, not where to look for expired list.
Luckily clambert answered the question. credit should goto him.

The majority of expiring domain lists are created, as you suggested, by 
processing the data contained in the TLD zone files. A TLD zone file is a 
plain text file containing a listing of every domain currently registered for 
that specific top level domain (com, net, or org). These zone files are 
offered for free, exclusively by Verisign. In order to gain access, you'll 
need to fill out their online application available at:
http://www.verisign-grs.com/tld/tldForm.html

It appears this is now a one step process, as opposed to faxing contracts back 
and forth as was the policy a few months ago. Once you are granted access, 
you'll be given an FTP server, username, and password to be used with the IP 
address given upon submission. The zone files are located on the Verisign 
server, and are compressed with the GZIP compression algorithm. As you might 
imagine, the zone files are very large in size, and will occupy at least 3 
gigabytes of hard disk space once extracted. If you have any questions on the 
process, you can view Verisign's FAQ for more information: http://www.verisign-
grs.com/tld/tldFaq.html

You mentioned that you were looking to create expiring domain lists. This will 
prove to be a very difficult task, as there are over 30 million domains 
currently registered, and processing the zone files to create a "diff" will 
take a signifigant amount of time, processing power, and scripting. Alas, it 
can be done, and this is pretty much the only way to go about it. Also, you 
might want to note that the format of the zone files will be changing in a few 
months. You can read more about the reasoning behind the format change here:
http://www.verisign-grs.com/tld/announce_021102.html