<Apologies for the duplicate email but want to keep you informed about changes occurring at ARIN. This particular upgrade may be of interest to those who are not subscribed to arin-announce.> ----- Forwarded message from Member Services <info@arin.net> ----- From: Member Services <info@arin.net> Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 13:00:42 -0400 To: "arin-announce@arin.net" <arin-announce@arin.net> Subject: [arin-announce] ARIN's RESTful Whois Directory Service Available 26 June ARIN is deploying an improved Whois service called Whois-RWS on 26 June 2010. Included in the deployment are the following services that provide the general public with access to ARIN's registration data. * a RESTful Web Service (RWS) * a NICNAME/WHOIS port 43 service * a user-friendly web site (http://whois.arin.net) When using Whois-RWS you will notice some differences in behavior for certain queries and corresponding result sets on the NICNAME/WHOIS TCP port 43 service. These minor differences are documented at: https://www.arin.net/resources/whoisrws/whois_diff.html ARIN's Directory Service for registration data has used the NICNAME/WHOIS protocol since its inception. The limitations of the NICNAME/WHOIS protocol are well known and documented in RFC3912. Whois-RWS was created as an alternative to the ARIN Whois and will provide much richer functionality and capability to the community. Whois-RWS can easily be integrated into command line scripts, or it can be used with a web browser, which makes it applicable for programmatic consumption and accessible for interactive use. ARIN will continue to maintain services for the NICNAME/WHOIS protocol on TCP/43. This is achieved by using a proxy service to translate traditional ARIN Whois queries into Whois-RWS queries. However, ARIN recommends use of the RESTful Web Service. Those who choose to use the Whois-RWS Proxy will find it has many features unavailable over the existing Whois service, including: * Support for new query types such as CIDR queries * Better feedback for ambiguous queries * More finely scoped record type queries * Options for NICNAME/WHOIS clients that re-interpret traditional parameters used by ARIN's service. * RESTful URL references, useful for embedding into documents and e-mail * Better grouping of record types and delineation of results Another major benefit is that data from ARIN's registration database is distributed to the Whois-RWS servers many times throughout the day, versus the once-a-day update of ARIN's previous Whois service. Changes will be reflected more quickly through Whois-RWS, so query results will be more current than the previous Whois service. ARIN continues to welcome community participation on the Whois-RWS mailing list, and we invite you to subscribe and provide feedback to: http://lists.arin.net/mailman/listinfo/arin-whoisrws Regards, Mark Kosters Chief Technical Officer American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) ----- End forwarded message -----