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.\"     From: @(#)whois.1	8.1 (Berkeley) 6/6/93
.\" $FreeBSD$
.\"
.Dd April 25, 2016
.Dt WHOIS 1
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm whois
.Nd "Internet domain name and network number directory service"
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm
.Op Fl aAbfgiIklmPQrRS
.Op Fl c Ar TLD | Fl h Ar host
.Op Fl p Ar port
.Op Fl -
.Ar name ...
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Nm
utility looks up records in the databases maintained by several
Network Information Centers
.Pq Tn NICs .
.Pp
By default
.Nm
starts by querying the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) whois server,
and follows referrals to whois servers
that have more specific details about the query
.Ar name .
The IANA whois server knows about
IP address and AS numbers
as well as domain names.
.Pp
There are a few special cases where referrals do not work, so
.Nm
goes directly to the appropriate server.
These include point-of-contact handles for ARIN,
.Pa nic.at ,
NORID, and RIPE,
and domain names under
.Pa ac.uk .
.Pp
The options are as follows:
.Bl -tag -width indent
.It Fl a
Use the American Registry for Internet Numbers
.Pq Tn ARIN
database.
It contains network numbers used in those parts of the world covered neither by
.Tn APNIC , AfriNIC , LACNIC ,
nor by
.Tn RIPE .
The query syntax is documented at
.Pa https://www.arin.net/resources/whoisrws/whois_api.html#nicname
.It Fl A
Use the Asia/Pacific Network Information Center
.Pq Tn APNIC
database.
It contains network numbers used in East Asia, Australia,
New Zealand, and the Pacific islands.
Get query syntax documentation using
.Ic whois -A help
.It Fl b
Use the Network Abuse Clearinghouse database.
It contains addresses to which network abuse should be reported,
indexed by domain name.
.It Fl c Ar TLD
This is the equivalent of using the
.Fl h
option with an argument of
.Qq Ar TLD Ns Li .whois-servers.net .
This can be helpful for locating country-class TLD whois servers.
.It Fl f
Use the African Network Information Centre
.Pq Tn AfriNIC
database.
It contains network numbers used in Africa and the islands of the
western Indian Ocean.
Get query syntax documentation using
.Ic whois -f help
.It Fl g
Use the US non-military federal government database, which contains points of
contact for subdomains of
.Pa .GOV .
.It Fl h Ar host
Use the specified host instead of the default.
Either a host name or an IP address may be specified.
.It Fl i
Use the traditional Network Information Center (InterNIC)
.Pq Pa whois.internic.net
database.
This now contains only registrations for domain names under
.Pa .COM ,
.Pa .NET ,
.Pa .EDU .
You can specify the type of object to search for like
.Ic whois -i ' Ns Ar type Ar name Ns Ic '
where
.Ar type
can be
.Nm domain , nameserver , registrar .
The
.Ar name
can contain
.Li *
wildcards.
.It Fl I
Use the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
.Pq Tn IANA
database.
.It Fl k
Use the National Internet Development Agency of Korea's
.Pq Tn KRNIC
database.
It contains network numbers and domain contact information
for Korea.
.It Fl l
Use the Latin American and Caribbean IP address Regional Registry
.Pq Tn LACNIC
database.
It contains network numbers used in much of Latin America and the
Caribbean.
.It Fl m
Use the Route Arbiter Database
.Pq Tn RADB
database.
It contains route policy specifications for a large
number of operators' networks.
.It Fl p Ar port
Connect to the whois server on
.Ar port .
If this option is not specified,
.Nm
defaults to port 43.
.It Fl P
Use the PeeringDB database of AS numbers.
It contains details about presence at internet peering points
for many network operators.
.It Fl Q
Do a quick lookup;
.Nm
will not attempt to follow referrals to other whois servers.
This is the default if a server is explicitly specified
using one of the other options or in an environment variable.
See also the
.Fl R
option.
.It Fl r
Use the R\(aaeseaux IP Europ\(aaeens
.Pq Tn RIPE
database.
It contains network numbers and domain contact information
for Europe.
Get query syntax documentation using
.Ic whois -r help
.It Fl R
Do a recursive lookup;
.Nm
will attempt to follow referrals to other whois servers.
This is the default if no server is explicitly specified.
See also the
.Fl Q
option.
.It Fl S
By default
.Nm
adjusts simple queries (without spaces) to produce more useful output
from certain whois servers,
and it suppresses some uninformative output.
With the
.Fl S
option,
.Nm
sends the query and prints the output verbatim.
.El
.Pp
The operands specified to
.Nm
are treated independently and may be used
as queries on different whois servers.
.Sh ENVIRONMENT
.Bl -tag -width WHOIS_SERVER
.It Ev WHOIS_SERVER
The primary default whois server.
If this is unset,
.Nm
uses the
.Ev RA_SERVER
environment variable.
.It Ev RA_SERVER
The secondary default whois server.
If this is unset,
.Nm
will use
.Pa whois.iana.org .
.El
.Sh EXIT STATUS
.Ex -std
.Sh EXAMPLES
To obtain contact information about an
administrator located in the Russian
.Tn TLD
domain
.Qq Li RU ,
use the
.Fl c
option as shown in the following example, where
.Ar CONTACT-ID
is substituted with the actual contact identifier.
.Pp
.Dl Ic whois -c RU CONTACT-ID
.Pp
(Note: This example is specific to the
.Tn TLD
.Qq Li RU ,
but other
.Tn TLDs
can be queried by using a similar syntax.)
.Pp
The following example demonstrates how to query
a whois server using a non-standard port, where
.Dq Li query-data
is the query to be sent to
.Dq Li whois.example.com
on port
.Dq Li rwhois
(written numerically as 4321).
.Pp
.Dl Ic whois -h whois.example.com -p rwhois query-data
.Pp
Some whois servers support complex queries
with dash-letter options.
You can use the
.Fl -
option to separate
.Nm
command options from whois server query options.
A query containing spaces must be quoted as one
argument to the
.Nm
command.
The following example asks the RIPE whois server
to return a brief description of its
.Dq Li domain
object type:
.Pp
.Dl Ic whois -r -- '-t domain'
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Rs
.%A Ken Harrenstien
.%A Vic White
.%T NICNAME/WHOIS
.%D 1 March 1982
.%O RFC 812
.Re
.Sh HISTORY
The
.Nm
command appeared in
.Bx 4.3 .