WHOIS

WHOIS (contraction of the English who is? , literally meaning which is? ) is a research service provided by the registers Internet, for example the regional Registres Internet (RIR) or the registers of domain names making it possible to obtain information on a Adresse IP or a Domain name. This information has very varied uses, that it is coordination between engineers networks to solve engineering problems, or the harassing of a holder of domain name by a company which would like to take again this name to him, by using its registered trademarks.

Here for example the current exit of waiter WHOIS of Affiliated for wikipedia.org:

… Legal warning… Domain ID: D51687756-LROR Domain Name: WIKIPEDIA.ORG Created One: 13-Jan-2001 00:12: 14 UTC Last Updated One: 01-Mar-2006 12:39: 33 UTC Expiry Dates: 13-Jan-2015 00:12: 14 UTC Registrar sponsoring: Go Daddy Software, Inc. (R91-LROR) Registrant Name: Wikimedia Foundation Registrant Organization: Wikimedia Foundation Inc. Registrant State/Province: Florida Registrant Country: US

And that of waiter WHOIS of AfriNIC for 213.136.100.81 :

inetnum: 213.136.100.0 - 213.136.100.255 netname: CIT-ICA descr: Backbone Internet of Ivory Coast Telecom country: Ci admin-c: AS2462-AFRINIC tech-c: AC1582-AFRINIC status: ASSIGNED PA

person: ANGEL SANCHEZ address: IVORY COAST TELECOM address: 17 BP 275 ABIDJAN 17 address: IVORY COAST phon: +225 20 34 53 27 e-mail: asanchez@citelecom.ci NIC-hdl: AS2462-AFRINIC

Some Web sites provide a similar service, often called WHOIS by abuse language.

Organization and diagram of data

The data stored in the Database of the register are it according to its own diagram of data. There does not exist standard on what the register must store and according to which vocabulary.

For example, .org, referred to above for wikipedia.org, with the concept of scratch date , which does not exist in all the registers (.fr has a date birthday which does not have the same significance since the renewal is automatic).

As this diagram of data is closely related to the policy of recording of the register, it is probable that there will be no convergence of these diagrams.

Right and protection of the personal data

As WHOIS does not allow authentification, the access to waiter WHOIS is typically public. That can pose problems for the protection of the private life of the people or, quite simply, for the commercial secret or for protection against the Spam.

Various solutions were studied and sometimes deployed (like optional systems of restricted diffusion of information, even like the quasi-suppression of the data returned by WHOIS). The choice of what one publishes remainder one of the most extreme political questions for a register Internet.

The data been useful by waiter WHOIS are frequently false: either they were erroneous since the beginning (for example because the holder did not have an other choice to protect his private life), or they became invalid with time.

Technique

WHOIS is standardized in RFC 3912.

Each register has its own waiter WHOIS. The mechanisms of redirection, making it possible a register to return to another, better well informed, are not standardized.

The RFC does not specify absolutely the format of exit. The format " attribute: valeur" that one sees in the examples above is most current but not only.

And, even in this case, in the absence of common diagram of data, the interpretation of the result of WHOIS requires a knowledge of the policy of the questioned register.

To find waiter WHOIS relevant, one must indicate it to his software. There do not exist standard mechanisms to find it. Certain customers WHOIS " intelligents" use a local file of configuration (it is the case of GNU WHOIS) or reach a nonofficial base like whois-servers.net.

From the technical point of view, the large limitations of WHOIS are:

  • no mechanism of authentification,

  • no mechanism of internationalization,
  • not of standard for the format of exit,
  • not of standard for the redirections.

Because of these limitations, IETF developed a new protocol, IRIS ( Internet Registry Information Service ), specified in the RFC 3981, and which is currently deployed by no register. One will note that other protocols like LDAP or whois++ had tried to replace WHOIS, without success.

Others

The order /whois {pseudo} makes it possible in the majority of the customers IRC to obtain information on a connected person.

See too

External bonds

The official site for the WHOIS on the fields in .fr
    • Site of Afnic

  • Examples of Web sites providing a service WHOIS. Attention, much is incomplete (covering only some TLD) and rare are those which make it possible to seek by Adresse IP. It is for the majority of the tools of amateur, a serious research must rather use a customer WHOIS in Ligne of order:

    • CentralOps.net
    • Whois.org
    • Audimate.fr
    • More than 90 multiple domain names/WHOIS
    • Tools WHOIS, WHOIS IP, Reverse DNS, and Nslookup

  • WHOIS allowing of requeter all the RIR (provided source)

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