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.\"     From: @(#)whois.1	8.1 (Berkeley) 6/6/93
.\" $FreeBSD$
.\"
.Dd May 14, 2015
.Dt WHOIS 1
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm whois
.Nd "Internet domain name and network number directory service"
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm
.Op Fl aAbfgiIklmPQr
.Op Fl c Ar country-code | Fl h Ar host
.Op Fl p Ar port
.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
automatically discovers the name of a whois server to use
from the top-level domain
.Pq Tn TLD
of the supplied (single) argument.
It tries
.Qq Va TLD Ns Li .whois-servers.net
and
.Qq Li whois.nic. Ns Va TLD
and if neither host exists it falls back to its default server.
.Pp
If an IP address or AS number is specified,
the whois server will default to
the American Registry for Internet Numbers
.Pq Tn ARIN .
.Pp
If
.Nm
cannot automatically discover a server,
it will fall back to
the host specified in the
.Ev WHOIS_SERVER
or
.Ev RA_SERVER
environment variables, or if those are not set, it will use
.Pa whois.crsnic.net .
.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 .
.Pp
(Hint: All point of contact handles in the
.Tn ARIN
whois database end with
.Qq Li -ARIN . )
.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.
.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 country-code
This is the equivalent of using the
.Fl h
option with an argument of
.Qq Ar country-code Ns Li .whois-servers.net .
.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.
.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 obsolete Network Solutions Registry for Internet Numbers
.Pq Pa whois.networksolutions.com
database.
.It Fl I
Use the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
.Pq Tn IANA
database.
It contains network information for top-level domains.
.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.
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.
.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, if the whois server is
.Pa whois.verisign-grs.com
(or a CNAME alias pointing at that name)
then
.Nm
will query for
.Dl domain Ar name
The
.Fl S
option suppresses this behaviour,
allowing you to make a loose-matching query,
or query for host objects using the syntax
.Dl nameserver Ar name
.El
.Pp
The operands specified to
.Nm
are treated independently and may be used
as queries on different whois servers.
.Sh ENVIRONMENT
.Bl -tag
.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.crsnic.net .
.El
.Sh EXIT STATUS
.Ex -std
.Sh EXAMPLES
Most types of data, such as domain names and
.Tn IP
addresses, can be used as arguments to
.Nm
without any options, and
.Nm
will choose the correct whois server to query.
Some exceptions, where
.Nm
will not be able to handle data correctly, are detailed below.
.Pp
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 "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 "whois -h whois.example.com -p rwhois query-data"
.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 .