WHOIS (pronounced as the phrase "who is") is a query and response protocol that is used for querying databases that store an Internet resource's registered users or assignees. These resources include domain names, IP address blocks and autonomous systems, but it is also used for a wider range of other information. The protocol stores and delivers database content in a human-readable format. The current iteration of the WHOIS protocol was drafted by the Internet Society, and is documented in RFC 3912. Whois is also the name of the command-line utility on most UNIX systems used to make WHOIS protocol queries. In addition, WHOIS has a sister protocol called Referral Whois (RWhois).
History
Elizabeth Feinler and her team (who had created the Resource Directory for ARPANET) were responsible for creating the first WHOIS directory in the early 1970s. Feinler set up a server in Stanford's Network Information Center (NIC) which acted as a directory that could retrieve relevant information about people or entities. She and the team created domains, with Feinler's suggestion that domains be divided into categories based on the physical address of the computer. The process of registration was established in RFC 920. WHOIS was standardized in the early 1980s to look up domains, people, and other resources related to domain and number registrations. As all registration was done by one organization at that time, one centralized server was used for WHOIS queries. This made looking up such information very easy. At the time of the emergence of the internet from the ARPANET, the only organization that handled all domain registrations was the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the United States government (founded in 1958.). The responsibility of domain registration remained with DARPA as the ARPANET became the Internet during the 1980s. UUNET began offering domain registration service; however, they simply handled the paperwork which they forwarded to the DARPA Network Information Center (NIC). Then the National Science Foundation directed that commercial, third-party entities would handle the management of Internet domain registration. InterNIC was formed in 1993 under contract with the NSF, consisting of Network Solutions, Inc., General Atomics and AT&T. The General Atomics contract was canceled after several years due to performance issues. 20th-century WHOIS servers were highly permissive and would allow wild-card searches. A WHOIS query of a person's last name would yield all individuals with that name. A query with a given keyword returned all registered domains containing that keyword. A query for a given administrative contact returned all domains the administrator was associated with. Since the advent of the commercialized Internet, multiple registrars and unethical spammers, such permissive searching is no longer available. On December 1, 1999, management of the top-level domains (TLDs) com, net, and org was assigned to ICANN. At the time, these TLDs were converted to a thin WHOIS model. Existing WHOIS clients stopped working at that time. A month later, it had self-detecting Common Gateway Interface support so that the same program could operate a web-based WHOIS lookup, and an external TLD table to support multiple WHOIS servers based on the TLD of the request. This eventually became the model of the modern WHOIS client. By 2005, there were many more generic top-level domains than there had been in the early 1980s. There are also many more country-code top-level domains. This has led to a complex network of domain name registrars and registrar associations, especially as the management of Internet infrastructure has become more internationalized. As such, performing a WHOIS query on a domain requires knowing the correct, authoritative WHOIS server to use. Tools to do WHOIS domain searches have become common and are offered by providers such as IONOS and Namecheap.
CRISP and IRIS In 2003, an IETF committee was formed to create a new standard for looking up information on domain names and network numbers: Cross Registry Information Service Protocol (CRISP). Between January 2005 and July 2006, the working name for this proposed new standard was Internet Registry Information Service (IRIS) The initial IETF Proposed Standards RFCs for IRIS can be found in the Further reading section of this article. The status of RFCs this group worked on can be found on the As of March 2009, the CRISP IETF Working Group concluded, after a final RFC 5144 was published by the group. Note: The IETF CRISP working group is not to be confused with the Number Resource Organization's (NRO) Team of the same name "Consolidated RIR IANA Stewardship Proposal Team" (CRISP Team).
WEIRDS and RDAP
In 2013, the IETF acknowledged that IRIS had not been a successful replacement for WHOIS. The primary technical reason for that appeared to be the complexity of IRIS. Further, non-technical reasons were deemed to lie in areas upon which the IETF does not pass judgment. Meanwhile, ARIN and RIPE NCC managed to serve WHOIS data via RESTful web services. The charter (drafted in February 2012) provided for separate specifications, for number registries first and for name registries to follow. The working group produced five proposed standard documents and an informational document.
Protocol The WHOIS protocol had its origin in the ARPANET NICNAME protocol and was based on the NAME/FINGER Protocol, described in RFC 742 (1977). The NICNAME/WHOIS protocol was first described in RFC 812 in 1982 by Ken Harrenstien and Vic White of the Network Information Center at SRI International. WHOIS was originally implemented on the Network Control Protocol (NCP) but found its major use when the TCP/IP suite was standardized across the ARPANET and later the Internet. The protocol specification is the following (original quote):
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