Tribblix: manual page: whois.1

WHOIS(1) User Commands WHOIS(1)

NAME

whois - Internet domain name and network number directory service

SYNOPSIS

whois [-aAbfgiIklmQr] [-c country-code | Fl h host] [-p port] name...

DESCRIPTION

The whois utility looks up records in the databases maintained by
several Network Information Centers (NICs).

The options are as follows:

-a Use the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN)
database. It contains network numbers used in those parts of
the world covered neither by APNIC, AfriNIC, LACNIC, nor by
RIPE.

(Hint: All point of contact handles in the ARIN whois database
end with -ARIN.)

-A Use the Asia/Pacific Network Information Center (APNIC)
database. It contains network numbers used in East Asia,
Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific islands.

-b Use the Network Abuse Clearinghouse database. It contains
addresses to which network abuse should be reported, indexed
by domain name.

-c country-code
This is the equivalent of using the -h option with an argument
of country-code.whois-servers.net.

-f Use the African Network Information Centre (AfriNIC) database.
It contains network numbers used in Africa and the islands of
the western Indian Ocean.

-g Use the US non-military federal government database, which
contains points of contact for subdomains of .GOV.

-h host
Use the specified host instead of the default variant. Either
a host name or an IP address may be specified.

By default whois constructs the name of a whois server to use
from the top-level domain (TLD) of the supplied (single)
argument, and appending .whois-servers.net . This effectively
allows a suitable whois server to be selected automatically
for a large number of TLDs.

In the event that an IP address is specified, the whois server
will default to the American Registry for Internet Numbers
(ARIN). If a query to ARIN references APNIC, AfriNIC, LACNIC,
or RIPE, that server will be queried also, provided that the
-Q option is not specified.

If the query is not a domain name or IP address, whois will
fall back to whois.crsnic.net.

-i Use the Network Solutions Registry for Internet Numbers
(whois.networksolutions.com) database. It contains network
numbers and domain contact information for most of
.COM,.NET,.ORG and .EDU domains.

NOTE ! The registration of these domains is now done by a
number of independent and competing registrars and this
database holds no information on the domains registered by
organizations other than Network Solutions, Inc. Also, note
that the InterNIC database (whois.internic.net) is no longer
handled by Network Solutions, Inc. For details, see
http://www.internic.net/.

(Hint: Contact information, identified by the term handle, can
be looked up by prefixing "handle" to the NIC handle in the
query.)

-I Use the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) database.
It contains network information for top-level domains.

-k Use the National Internet Development Agency of Korea's
(KRNIC) database. It contains network numbers and domain
contact information for Korea.

-l Use the Latin American and Caribbean IP address Regional
Registry (Tn LACNIC) database. It contains network numbers
used in much of Latin America and the Caribbean.

-m Use the Route Arbiter Database (RADB) database. It contains
route policy specifications for a large number of operators'
networks.

-p port
Connect to the whois server on port. If this option is not
specified, whois defaults to port 43.

-Q Do a quick lookup. This means that whois will not attempt to
lookup the name in the authoritative whois server (if one is
listed). This option has no effect when combined with any
other options.

-r Use the R'eseaux IP Europ'eens (RIPE) database. It contains
network numbers and domain contact information for Europe.

The operands specified to whois are treated independently and
may be used as queries on different whois servers.

EXIT STATUS

The whois utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.

EXAMPLES

Most types of data, such as domain names and IP addresses, can be
used as arguments to whois without any options, and whois will choose
the correct whois server to query. Some exceptions, where whois will
not be able to handle data correctly, are detailed below.

To obtain contact information about an administrator located in the
Russian TLD domain RU, use the -c option as shown in the following
example, where CONTACT-ID is substituted with the actual contact
identifier.

whois -c RU CONTACT-ID

(Note: This example is specific to the TLD RU, but other TLDs can be
queried by using a similar syntax.)

The following example demonstrates how to query a whois server using
a non-standard port, where ``query-data'' is the query to be sent to
``whois.example.com'' on port ``rwhois'' (written numerically as
4321).

whois -h whois.example.com -p rwhois query-data

HISTORY