WHOIS протоколы: домендік ақпаратты іздеу және тарихы

Computer network protocol
a method for checking information about ownership of a domain name
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
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).

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 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 (created during 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) , , and 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.

WHOIS lookups were traditionally performed with a command line interface application, but now many alternative web based tools exist. A WHOIS database consists of a set of text records for each resource. These text records consists of various items of information about the resource itself, and any associated information of assignees, registrants, administrative information, such as creation and expiration dates. Two data models exist for storing resource information in a WHOIS database, the thick and the thin model.

The first applications written for the WHOIS information system were command line interface tools for Unix and Unix like operating systems (i. e. Solaris, Linux etc.). WHOIS client and server software is distributed as free open source software and binary distributions are included with all Unix like systems. Various commercial Unix implementations may use a proprietary implementation (for example, Solaris 7). A WHOIS command line client passes a phrase given as an argument directly to the WHOIS server. Various free open source examples can still be found on sites such as sourceforge. net. However, most modern WHOIS tools implement command line flags or options, such as the h option to access a specific server host, but default servers are preconfigured. Additional options may allow control of the port number to connect on, displaying additional debugging data, or changing recursion/referral behavior. Like most TCP/IP client–server applications, a WHOIS client takes the user input and then opens an Internet socket to its destination server. The WHOIS protocol manages the transmission of the query and reception of results.

With the advent of the World Wide Web and especially the loosening up of the Network Solutions monopoly, looking up WHOIS information via the web has become quite common. At present, popular web based WHOIS queries may be conducted from ARIN, RIPE and APNIC. Most early web based WHOIS clients were merely front ends to a command line client, where the resulting output just gets displayed on a web page with little, if any, clean up or formatting. Currently, web based WHOIS clients usually perform the WHOIS queries directly and then format the results for display. Many such clients are proprietary, authored by domain name registrars. The need for web based clients came from the fact that command line WHOIS clients largely existed only in the Unix and large computing worlds. Microsoft Windows and Macintosh computers had no WHOIS clients installed by default, so registrars had to find a way to provide access to WHOIS data for potential customers. Many end users still rely on such clients, even though command line and graphical clients exist now for most home PC platforms. Microsoft provides the Sysinternals Suite that includes a whois client at no cost. CPAN has several Perl modules available that work with WHOIS servers. Many of them are not current and do not fully function with the current (2005) WHOIS server infrastructure. However, there is still much useful functionality to derive including looking up AS numbers and registrant contacts.

WHOIS services are mainly run by registrars and registries; for example the Public Interest Registry (PIR) maintains the ORG registry and associated WHOIS service.

WHOIS servers operated by regional Internet registries (RIR) can be queried directly to determine the Internet service provider responsible for a particular resource. The records of each of these registries are cross referenced, so that a query to ARIN for a record which belongs to RIPE will return a placeholder pointing to the RIPE WHOIS server. This lets the WHOIS user making the query know that the detailed information resides on the RIPE server. In addition to the RIRs servers, commercial services exist, such as the Routing Assets Database used by some large networks (e. g., large Internet providers that acquired other ISPs in several RIR areas).

There is currently no widely extended way for determining the responsible WHOIS server for a DNS domain, though a number of methods are in common use for top level domains (TLDs). Some registries use DNS SRV records (defined in RFC 2782) to allow clients to discover the address of the WHOIS server. Some WHOIS lookups require searching the procuring domain registrar to display domain owner details.

One criticism of WHOIS is the lack of full access to the data. Few parties have realtime access to the complete databases. Others cite the competing goal of domain privacy as a criticism, although this problem is strongly mitigated by domain privacy services. Currently, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) broadly requires that the mailing address, phone number and e mail address of those owning or administering a domain name to be made publicly available through the "WHOIS" directories. The registrant's (domain owner's) contact details, such as address and telephone number, are easily accessible to anyone who queries a WHOIS server. However, that policy enables spammers, direct marketers, identity thieves or other attackers to loot the directory for personal information about these people. Although ICANN has been exploring changing WHOIS to enable greater privacy, there is a lack of consensus among major stakeholders as to what type of change should be made. Some domain registrars offer private registrations (also known as domain privacy), by which the contact information of the registrar is shown instead of the customer's. With the offer of private registration from many registrars, some of the risk has been mitigated. For this reason, some WHOIS servers and websites offering WHOIS queries have implemented rate limiting systems, such as web based CAPTCHA and limited amounts of search queries per user IP address. The WHOIS protocol was not written with an international audience in mind. A WHOIS server and/or client cannot determine the text encoding in effect for the query or the database content. Many servers were originally using US ASCII and Internationalization concerns were not taken into consideration until much later. This might impact the usability or usefulness of the WHOIS protocol in countries outside the USA. The Federal Trade Commission has testified about how inaccurate WHOIS records thwart their investigations. Congressional hearings have been conducted about the importance of WHOIS in 2001, 2002 and 2006. The Fraudulent Online Identity Sanctions Act "make it a violation of trademark and copyright law if a person knowingly provided, or caused to be provided, materially false contact information in making, maintaining, or renewing the registration of a domain name used in connection with the violation," where the latter "violation" refers to a prior violation of trademark or copyright law. The act does not make the submission of false WHOIS data illegal in itself, only if used to shield oneself from prosecution for crimes committed using that domain name.

The Expert Working Group (EWG) of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) recommended on 24 June 2013 that WHOIS should be scrapped. It recommends that WHOIS be replaced with a system that keeps information secret from most Internet users, and only discloses information for "permissible purposes". ICANN's list of permissible purposes includes domain name research, domain name sale and purchase, regulatory enforcement, personal data protection, legal actions, and abuse mitigation. Although WHOIS has been a key tool of journalists in determining who was disseminating certain information on the Internet, the use of WHOIS by the free press is not included in ICANN's proposed list of permissible purposes. The EWG collected public input on the initial report until 13 September 2013. Its final report was issued on 6 June 2014, without meaningful changes to the recommendations. as of 2015, ICANN is in the "process of re inventing WHOIS," working on "ICANN WHOIS Beta." On January 19, 2023, ICANN opened voting on a global amendment to all its registry and registrar agreements. In it they defined an RDAP Ramp Up Period of 180 days starting with the effectiveness of this amendment. 360 days after this period is defined as the WHOIS Services Sunset Date, after which it is not a requirement for registries and registrars to offer a WHOIS service and instead only an RDAP service is required. All voting thresholds were met within the 60 day voting period and the amendment was approved by the ICANN Board. The date for WHOIS Sunset for gTLDs was set as 28 January 2025.