Directory of Internet Whois Servers

Last update: Fri Mar 5 05:51:48 2004

Whois servers return information about ownership and location of Internet hostnames and IP numbers.

Internet Whois service Request-for-Comment (RFC) documents

The Whois service is described in these RFCs:

• RFC 812: NICNAME/WHOIS (1982)
• RFC 954: NICNAME/WHOIS (1985)
• RFC 1714: Referral Whois Protocol (RWhois) (1994)
• RFC 1834: Whois and Network Information Lookup Service, Whois++ (1995)
• RFC 1835: Architecture of the WHOIS++ service (1995)
• RFC 1913: Architecture of the WHOIS++ Index Service (1996)
• RFC 1914: How to Interact with a Whois++ Mesh (1996)
• RFC 2167: Referral Whois (RWhois) Protocol V1.5 (1997)

Local Whois lookups

Many Unix systems already have commands to do command-line Whois lookups:

• host
• jwhois [source distribution available at ftp://ftp.gnu.org/jwhois ]
• whois
  [source code available at
  ftp://dns.vrx.net/pub/whois.c
  and list of Whois servers by domain at
  ftp://dns.vrx.net/pub/whohosts.txt ]

Related Unix commands for translation between IP names and numbers include:

• dig
• nslookup
• nstest [Sun Solaris SPARC and x86 (IA-32) only]

Unix systems keep a list of neighborhood domain name servers in /etc/resolv.conf; they are used on the local host to translate IP hostnames to numeric addresses.

Major Internet Whois servers

• ARIN (American Registry for Internet Numbers)
  http://ww1.arin.net/whois/
• APNIC database (Asia Pacific Network Information Centre)
  http://www.apnic.net/search/
• Broadband Reports http://www.dslreports.com/whois
• CentralOps.net http://centralops.net/co/
• CIRA/ACEI (Canadian Internet Registration Authority == l'Autorit é canadienne pour les enregistrements Internet) http://www.cira.ca/
• Freshmeat
  http://freshmeat.net/projects/whois/
  Source code at
  http://www.linux.it/~md/software/
  http://www.linux.it/~md/software/whois_4.6.9.tar.gz
• GOV domain names
  http://www.nic.gov/whois.html
• InterNIC
  http://www.internic.net/whois.html
• LACNIC (Latin American and Caribbean Internet Addresses Registry)
  http://lacnic.net/cgi-bin/lacnic/whois?lg=EN
• Micronicos [listing of Whois servers by country]
  http://www.micronicos.com/whatsnew/whois-servers-list.html
• MIT
  ftp://sipb.mit.edu/pub/whois/whois-servers.list
• Network Solutions (COM, NET, ORG and EDU domain names)
  http://www.netsol.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois/
• RIPE (Réseaux IP Européens) [NL]
  http://www.ripe.net/perl/whois
• SWITCH Whois Gateway [CH]
  http://www.switch.ch/search/whois_form.html
  [has links to several other Whois servers]
• Universal Whois for Internet domains
  http://uwhois.com/
  [search multiple Whois servers in parallel]
• Whois.Net
  http://www.whois.net/

Whois servers by domain