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1 WHOIS(1) User Commands WHOIS(1) 2 3 4 5 NAME 6 whois - Internet domain name and network number directory service 7 8 SYNOPSIS 9 whois [-aAbfgiIklmQr] [-c country-code | Fl h host] [-p port] name... 10 11 DESCRIPTION 12 The whois utility looks up records in the databases maintained by 13 several Network Information Centers (NICs). 14 15 The options are as follows: 16 17 -a Use the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) database. 18 It contains network numbers used in those parts of the world 19 covered neither by APNIC, AfriNIC, LACNIC, nor by RIPE. 20 21 (Hint: All point of contact handles in the ARIN whois database 22 end with -ARIN.) 23 24 25 -A Use the Asia/Pacific Network Information Center (APNIC) 26 database. It contains network numbers used in East Asia, 27 Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific islands. 28 29 -b Use the Network Abuse Clearinghouse database. It contains 30 addresses to which network abuse should be reported, indexed by 31 domain name. 32 33 -c country-code 34 This is the equivalent of using the -h option with an argument 35 of country-code.whois-servers.net. 36 37 -f Use the African Network Information Centre (AfriNIC) database. 38 It contains network numbers used in Africa and the islands of 39 the western Indian Ocean. 40 41 -g Use the US non-military federal government database, which 42 contains points of contact for subdomains of .GOV. 43 44 -h host 45 Use the specified host instead of the default variant. Either a 46 host name or an IP address may be specified. 47 48 By default whois constructs the name of a whois server to use 49 from the top-level domain (TLD) of the supplied (single) 50 argument, and appending .whois-servers.net . This effectively 51 allows a suitable whois server to be selected automatically for 52 a large number of TLDs. 53 54 In the event that an IP address is specified, the whois server 55 will default to the American Registry for Internet Numbers 56 (ARIN). If a query to ARIN references APNIC, AfriNIC, LACNIC, 57 or RIPE, that server will be queried also, provided that the -Q 58 option is not specified. 59 60 If the query is not a domain name or IP address, whois will fall 61 back to whois.crsnic.net. 62 63 -i Use the Network Solutions Registry for Internet Numbers 64 (whois.networksolutions.com) database. It contains network 65 numbers and domain contact information for most of 66 .COM,.NET,.ORG and .EDU domains. 67 68 NOTE ! The registration of these domains is now done by a 69 number of independent and competing registrars and this database 70 holds no information on the domains registered by organizations 71 other than Network Solutions, Inc. Also, note that the InterNIC 72 database (whois.internic.net) is no longer handled by Network 73 Solutions, Inc. For details, see http://www.internic.net/. 74 75 (Hint: Contact information, identified by the term handle, can 76 be looked up by prefixing "handle" to the NIC handle in the 77 query.) 78 79 -I Use the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) database. It 80 contains network information for top-level domains. 81 82 -k Use the National Internet Development Agency of Korea's (KRNIC) 83 database. It contains network numbers and domain contact 84 information for Korea. 85 86 -l Use the Latin American and Caribbean IP address Regional 87 Registry (Tn LACNIC) database. It contains network numbers used 88 in much of Latin America and the Caribbean. 89 90 -m Use the Route Arbiter Database (RADB) database. It contains 91 route policy specifications for a large number of operators' 92 networks. 93 94 -p port 95 Connect to the whois server on port. If this option is not 96 specified, whois defaults to port 43. 97 98 -Q Do a quick lookup. This means that whois will not attempt to 99 lookup the name in the authoritative whois server (if one is 100 listed). This option has no effect when combined with any other 101 options. 102 103 -r Use the R'eseaux IP Europ'eens (RIPE) database. It contains 104 network numbers and domain contact information for Europe. 105 106 The operands specified to whois are treated independently and 107 may be used as queries on different whois servers. 108 109 EXIT STATUS 110 The whois utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs. 111 112 EXAMPLES 113 Most types of data, such as domain names and IP addresses, can be used 114 as arguments to whois without any options, and whois will choose the 115 correct whois server to query. Some exceptions, where whois will not 116 be able to handle data correctly, are detailed below. 117 118 To obtain contact information about an administrator located in the 119 Russian TLD domain RU, use the -c option as shown in the following 120 example, where CONTACT-ID is substituted with the actual contact 121 identifier. 122 123 whois -c RU CONTACT-ID 124 125 (Note: This example is specific to the TLD RU, but other TLDs can be 126 queried by using a similar syntax.) 127 128 The following example demonstrates how to query a whois server using a 129 non-standard port, where ``query-data'' is the query to be sent to 130 ``whois.example.com'' on port ``rwhois'' (written numerically as 4321). 131 132 whois -h whois.example.com -p rwhois query-data 133 134 SEE ALSO 135 Vic White and Ken Harrenstien, NICNAME/WHOIS, 1 March 1982, RFC 812. 136 137 HISTORY 138 The whois command appeared in 4.3BSD. 139 140 141 142 October 2, 2009 WHOIS(1) --- EOF ---