They do, they do .. but there's all kinds of rwhois unfortunately. suresh@frodo 07:41:38 :~$ telnet rwhois.level3.net 4321 Trying 209.244.1.179... ^C [keeps timing out] suresh@frodo 07:48:17 :~$ telnet rwhois.hostnoc.net 4321 Trying 64.191.49.26... Connected to rwhois.hostnoc.net. Escape character is '^]'. %rwhois V-1.5:003fff:00 rwhois.hostnoc.net (by Network Solutions, Inc. V-1.5.9.5) [not particularly up to date] compared to, for example - suresh@frodo 07:47:13 :~$ telnet rwhois.cogentco.com 4321 Trying 66.28.3.252... Connected to plebe.sys.cogentco.com. Escape character is '^]'. %rwhois V-1.5:0010b0:00 rwhois.cogentco.com [fast, works great, accurate] suresh@frodo 07:47:22 :~$ telnet rwhois.softlayer.com 4321 Trying 66.228.118.79... Connected to rwhois.softlayer.com. Escape character is '^]'. %rwhois V-1.5:003fff:00 rwhois.softlayer.com (by Network Solutions, Inc. V-1.5.9.5) [ditto] On Thu, Apr 26, 2012 at 8:07 PM, Owen DeLong <owen@delong.com> wrote:
Actually, most of the ISPs I know that use RWHOIS instead of SWIP do so tying the RWHOIS server into their IP management database through an automated process (if not just live queries).
However, you are right that most ISPs use SWIP.
-- Suresh Ramasubramanian (ops.lists@gmail.com)