GENWiki

Premier IT Outsourcing and Support Services within the UK

User Tools

Site Tools


rfc:rfc1834

Network Working Group J. Gargano Request for Comments: 1834 K. Weiss Category: Informational University of California, Davis

                                                           August 1995
            Whois and Network Information Lookup Service
                              Whois++

Status of this Memo

 This memo provides information for the Internet community.  This memo
 does not specify an Internet standard of any kind.  Distribution of
 this memo is unlimited.

I. Introduction

 As currently defined, NICNAME/WHOIS [HARR85] service is a TCP
 transaction based query/response server, running on a few specific
 central machines, that provides netwide directory service to Internet
 users.  The Network Information Center (NIC) maintains the central
 NICNAME database and server, defined in RFC 954, providing online
 look-up of individuals, network organizations, key host machines, and
 other information of interest to users of the Internet.  The
 usefulness of this service has lead to the development of other
 distributed directory information servers and information retrieval
 tools and it is anticipated more will be created.  Many sites now
 maintain local directory servers with information about individuals,
 departments and services at that specific site.
 Typically these directory servers are network accessible.  Local
 development of these services has resulted in wide variations in the
 type of data stored, access methods, search schemes, and user
 interfaces.  The purpose of the Whois and Network Information Lookup
 Service Working Group (WNILS) is to expand and define the standard
 for WHOIS types of services, to resolve issues associated with the
 variations in access and provide a consistent and predictable service
 across the network.  This memo describes new features for WHOIS to
 meet these goals.

II. Architecture

 The WHOIS service should be provided in a client/server model.  There
 are no restrictions on the design of the client, provided it is
 capable of passing queries to the server in the proper format, and
 capturing the server's response in some useful format.  Existing
 WHOIS specifications call for clients to display responses in human-
 readable form.  This more general proposal does not impose that

Gargano & Weiss Informational [Page 1] RFC 1834 Whois++ Lookup Service August 1995

 restriction.
 This paper acknowledges the existence of many distributed information
 servers, and anticipates the creation of many more. To help users
 locate WHOIS servers, each server should have a nameserver entry in
 the form "whois.domain", i.e. whois.internic.net.

III. Client Design and Behavior

 The client provides the user interface to the WHOIS system and a
 mechanism for query generation and display of the response.  The
 client is responsible for providing support for paging of long output
 from the server.  All clients must provide this service.  The server
 will not include any special characters, or make any efforts to
 control output to a screen.
 Special search criteria may be specified by the use of keywords or
 special characters, some of which are defined in RFC 954.  Clients
 should be designed to make support for quoted strings unnecessary.

IV. Server Design and Behavior

 The server should return the same information in response to a given
 query consistently, regardless of the client software or the hardware
 used to originate the query. Queries should be evaluated on a case-
 insensitive basis. Spaces should not be considered in searches.  A
 search for "La Russo" should return both "LaRusso" and "La Russo" as
 matches.
 There are three types of data records supported in this proposal:
 records for people, hosts, and domains.
 Individual records
 Name                    Name of the individual          required
 Organization            Name of the organization        required
 Organization-type       Type of organization            optional
                         (university, commercial research)
 Work-telephone          Work telephone number           optional
 Fax-telephone           Fax telephone number            optional
 Work-address            Work postal address             optional

Gargano & Weiss Informational [Page 2] RFC 1834 Whois++ Lookup Service August 1995

 Title                   Working title or position       optional
                         within an organization
 Department              Department                      optional
 Email-address           Email address in RFC 822        optional
                         format for this individual
 Handle                  A unique identifier for this    required
                         record on the local server
 Last-record-update      Date this record was last       required
                         updated
 Home-telephone          Home telephone number           optional
 Home-address            Home postal address             optional
 Host records
 Hostname                Full domain name                required
 IPAddress               Address                         required
 Sysadmin-name           System administrator name       optional
 Sysadmin-phone          System administrator telephone  optional
 Sysadmin-address        System administrator address    optional
 Sysadmin-email          System admin. e-mail address    optional
 Machine-type            Type of machine                 optional
 OS                      Operating system                optional
 MX                      Mail exchanger                  optional
 Last-update             Last update                     optional
 Info                    Location of additional          optional
                         information (i.e. anonymous FTP)
 Domain records
 Domain-name             Domain name registered with     required
                         the Network Information Center
                         (NIC)
 Network-address         Network address associated      required
                         with this domain name
 Admin-name              Name of the Administrative      required
                         Contact for this domain

Gargano & Weiss Informational [Page 3] RFC 1834 Whois++ Lookup Service August 1995

 Admin-address           Postal address of the           required
                         Admintistrative Contact for
                         this domain
 Admin-telephone         Telephone number of the         required
                         Admintistrative Contact for
                         this domain
 Admin-email             Electronic mail address in      required
                         RFC 1822 format for the
                         Administrative Contact for
                         this domain
 Tech-name               Name of the Technical Contact   required
                         for this domain
 Tech-address            Postal address of the           required
                         Administrative Contact
                         for this domain
 Tech-telephone          Telephone number of the         required
                         Technical Contact for this
                         domain
 Tech-email              Electronic mail address in      required
                         RFC 822 format for the
                         Administrative Contact
                         for this domain
 Nameservers             Primary domain nameservers      optional
                         for this domain
 Last-update             Last date this record was       required
                         updated

Search Options

 A unique handle must be provided for every record in the server
 database to target specific records for display.  For example, if
 there are three individuals named, respectively, A. La  Russo, B.
 LaRusso, and C. Larusso, then a search for "LA RUSSO" would return
 all three as matches.  However, each record would have a unique
 handle, i.e. LARUSSO1, LARUSSO2, and LARUSSO3. A search for any one
 of these handles would return a single match for that particular
 individual.  This is consistent with the RFC 954 query, "whois
 !SMITH1"

Gargano & Weiss Informational [Page 4] RFC 1834 Whois++ Lookup Service August 1995

 Other search options which should be supported are:
 whois smith             exact match on last name
 whois smith,j           exact match on last name, first name
 whois "smith,j"         begins with "J"
 whois j. Smith
 whois "j. Smith"
 whois smith, john       exact match on last and first names
 whois "smith, john"
 whois john Smith
 whois "john Smith"
 whois .john Smith
 whois "smith..."        all last names beginning
 whois smith*            with Smith
 whois begins smith
 whois smith??           all last names beginning with
                         "Smith" and containing up to two
                         letters after "Smith", i.e. "Smith",
                         "Smithy", "Smithey" and "Smithie"
 whois ends smith        all last names ending in "smith"
 whois exact A Martinez  exact match for "A Martinez"
 whois fuzzy paulson     all last names that sound like or
                         are spelled like "Paulson"
 whois first Kazuko      exact match on first name "Kazuko"
 whois first begins Art  all first names beginning with "Art"
 whois first fuzzy Kasuko  all first names that sound like or are
                           spelled like "Kasuko"
 whois hamlet.ucdavis.edu  IP address and other information
 whois system hamlet.ucdavis.edu on the computer called
                                 hamlet.ucdavis.edu.Could be served
                                 by a domain name service querytype
                                 (QTYPE) *

Gargano & Weiss Informational [Page 5] RFC 1834 Whois++ Lookup Service August 1995

 whois system hamlet     IP address and other
                         information on the computer called
                         hamlet with the default domain
                         appended.  Could be served by a
                         domain name service querytype
                         (QTYPE) *
 whois 128.120.2.9       domain name and other
 whois system 128.120.2.9  information on the computer at
                           specified IP address.  Could be served
                           by a domain name service querytype
                           (QTYPE) PTR.
 whois !ucdavis-dom              site contacts and other
 whois domain ucdavis.edu        information on the site ucdavis
 If any keywords are specified in the query, the server will complete
 that specific query and return the results, even if 0 matches are
 found.  If no keywords are specified, the server will interpret the
 query based upon the rules above. Optionally, the server may be
 configured so that if a search yields no matches, the query will
 automatically be run again, but with the keyword begin inserted.
 Servers must support multiple levels of detail in response to
 queries.  A query yielding multiple matches should return a short-
 form record for each match. A query yielding a single match should
 return a long-form record. A query yielding no matches should return
 context-sensitive help on expanding the search criteria.

On-line Help

 The client should return a minimal (two line) help message for every
 query sent to the server. That message should identify the database
 being searched and provide instructions for the user to obtain more
 detailed help screens.
 Additional help should be provided in special situations. The server
 should recognize queries that return zero matches, and provide a
 brief help message explaining how to broaden a search.  If a search
 returns more than 50 matches, the server should take two actions.
 First, the user should get a message explaining how to narrow
 searches.  Second, the user should be offered the option of re-
 specifying the search, or receiving all matching responses.  When
 multiple matches are found and returned to the client, the server
 should add a brief help message explaining how to use handles to
 narrow the search to a single record.

Gargano & Weiss Informational [Page 6] RFC 1834 Whois++ Lookup Service August 1995

 If the client queries for "help" or "?" then the server should return
 a complete help file.  The help file should contain information in
 sufficient detail for the user to understand and access all the
 features of WHOIS service.

V. Extensibility

 This RFC defines a limited set of data records and fields for
 reliable whois queries.   Mechanisms exist for whois clients to
 discover extended data records and query for fields not defined in
 this memo.  It is recommended that Whois clients and servers include
 this functionality to maximize the extensibility and usefulness of
 this service.

VI. References

 [Harr85] Harrenstein, K., Stahl, M., and E. Feinler, E.,
          "NICNAME/WHOIS", RFC 954, SRI, October 1985.

VII. Security Considerations

 Security issues are not discussed in this memo.

VIII. Authors' Addresses

 Joan Gargano
 Information Technology
 Distributed Computing Analysis and Support
 University of California
 Davis, CA   95616
 EMail: jcgargano@ucdavis.edu
 Ken Weiss
 Information Technology
 Distributed Computing Analysis and Support
 University of California
 Davis, CA   95616
 EMail: krweiss@ucdavis.edu

Gargano & Weiss Informational [Page 7]

/data/webs/external/dokuwiki/data/pages/rfc/rfc1834.txt · Last modified: 1995/08/15 23:12 by 127.0.0.1

Donate Powered by PHP Valid HTML5 Valid CSS Driven by DokuWiki