Re: NSI Bulletin 098-010 | Update on Whois
-----Original Message----- From: Leo Bicknell <bicknell@dimension.net> Newsgroups: maillist.nanog To: nanog@merit.edu <nanog@merit.edu> Date: Wednesday, September 09, 1998 4:53 PM Subject: Re: NSI Bulletin 098-010 | Update on Whois
In article <Pine.BSD/.3.91.980909153738.7931A@crispy.iconn.net> you write:
According to David Holtzman of NSI (i asked him), the restrictions on whois are merely for technical reasons. I believe that he believes this, and from his point of view they have every right to filter/limit obnoxious or badly configured hosts/sites.
I have a call to arms. If we could get orginizations to mirror the whois data, and provide full, public access to it (via the current whois database) we could remove some of the dependency on NSI. After all, they don't run the only root, lots of other people run them as well...why should they run the only whois server?
As far as I know, the rwhois interface is more oriented toward the approach that you propose. You can walk the rwhois protocol thru a query or two via a simple telnet interface. The network of rwhois servers transfer complete zones. I think the original idea was to make it more like the DNS, only with contact information. Here is a random query about dimension.net. Note the minus sign to indicate commands. The "-holdconnect on" command keeps the link open for multiple queries. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out from the rwhois protocol how to transfer a large number of entries. Note, there are 5,532,210 "objects". $ telnet rwhois.internic.net 4321 Trying 198.41.1.6... Connected to root.rwhois.net. Escape character is '^]'. %rwhois V-1.5:003eff:00 root.rwhois.net (by Network Solutions, Inc. V-1.5.2rri-d l) -status %status limit:20 %status holdconnect:OFF %status forward:OFF %status objects:5532210 %status display:DUMP %status contact:rwhois-bugs@rwhois.net %ok -holdconnect on %ok dimension.net domain:Class-Name:domain domain:Auth-Area:net domain:ID:DIMENSION2-DOM.net domain:Handle:DIMENSION2-DOM domain:Domain-Name:DIMENSION.NET domain:Org-Name:Dimension Enterprises domain:Street-Address:1039 Sterling Rd, Suite 201 domain:City:Herndon domain:State:VA domain:Postal-Code:22170 domain:Country-Code:US domain:Server;I:GIZMO2-HST.NET domain:Server;I:USSEN-HST.ORG domain:Server;I:PUMA12-HST.COM domain:Admin-Contact;I:FM136.NET domain:Tech-Contact;I:JTB2.NET domain:Billing-Contact;I:FM136.NET domain:Created:19950817050000000 domain:Updated:19970502190154000 %ok %ok FM136.NET contact:Class-Name:contact contact:Auth-Area:net contact:ID:FM136.net contact:Handle:FM136 contact:First-Name:Fitzgerald contact:Last-Name:Michael contact:Name:Michael, Fitzgerald contact:Type:I contact:Email:mfitzgerald@DIMENSION.NET contact:Phone:703-709-7699 contact:Org-Name:Dimension Enterprises contact:Street-Address:1039 Sterling Rd, Suite 201 contact:City:Herndon contact:State:VA contact:Postal-Code:22170 contact:Country-Code:US contact:Created:19950817123945000 contact:Updated:19960221135609000 %ok @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Jim Fleming Unir Corporation - http://www.unir.com End-2-End: VPC(Java)---C+@---<IPv8>---C+@---(Java)VPC http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/domainname/130dftmail/unir.txt http://www.ddj.com/index/author/idx10133.htm
As far as I know, the rwhois interface is more oriented toward the approach that you propose. You can walk the rwhois protocol thru a query or two via a simple telnet interface. The network of rwhois servers transfer complete zones. I think the original idea was to make it more like the DNS, only with contact information. Here
I hadn't looked at rwhois in a long time, so I went ahead and reread some things on it. It is close, but I believe it is missing some key data. For instance, I could not get any phone numbers for any of our domains or contacts, information readily available via whois. Phone numbers are one of the very useful things whois provides when you have immediate problems with far-off networks. I did hack up a nice perl client to connect to the server and return information in the exact same format as "whois", which is kinda cool, and I also hacked up a nice web page interface that makes everything links and all that. Functionalty wise I think it's much better than the one on the rwhois page. See http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/rwhois.cgi if you want to try it for yourself. (NB: I seem to be getting "connection refused" far too frequently tonight, which for now results in a blank page...I have no idea why right now.) If someone can tell me how to get phone numbers in I'll post a URL to the script itself, so you can have your own "whois" client that uses "rwhois". If they are completely unavailable I go back to stating a need to replicate the whois data, perhaps into a "rwhois" database. :-) -- Leo Bicknell - bicknell@dimension.net Network Engineer (CCIE #3440) - Dimension Enterprises 1-703-709-7500, fax, 1-703-709-7699
I'm an idiot, teach me to work late at night. Of course the phone numbers are in the rwhois database, I just overlooked them. In any event, I have two URL's for you: http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/rwhois.cgi http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/rwhois.txt The first is a web script you can run and get pretty web output. Browse whois data in a clickable fashion. The second is a link so you can download the script itself and run it on your own web server. There is an added bonus to this method, if you invoke the script from the command line yourself it prints output that looks just like whois. It does not understand the "whois" syntax, unfortunately, but a straight query like "./rwhois.cgi dimension.net" will return the expected output. This allows you to drop in an rwhois client where you need to parse whois style output. I'm still having a problem where I get connection refused far too often running this script. At the moment I'm not sure if it's a perl bug, an mod IO::Socket::INET bug, a busy server, or programmer error. If you figure out how to fix that please let me know. I'm curious if anyone will find this useful, and/or if I just duplicated stuff that was already available. If it is useful I can probably extend it more, right now it's pretty utilitarian. -- Leo Bicknell - bicknell@dimension.net Network Engineer (CCIE #3440) - Dimension Enterprises 1-703-709-7500, fax, 1-703-709-7699
On Wed, 9 Sep 1998, Leo Bicknell wrote:
I'm an idiot, teach me to work late at night. Of course the phone numbers are in the rwhois database, I just overlooked them.
In any event, I have two URL's for you:
http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/rwhois.cgi http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/rwhois.txt
The first is a web script you can run and get pretty web output. Browse whois data in a clickable fashion. The second is a link so you can download the script itself and run it on your own web server. There is an added bonus to this method, if you invoke the script from the command line yourself it prints output that looks just like whois. It does not understand the "whois" syntax, unfortunately, but a straight query like "./rwhois.cgi dimension.net" will return the expected output. This allows you to drop in an rwhois client where you need to parse whois style output.
I'm still having a problem where I get connection refused far too often running this script. At the moment I'm not sure if it's a perl bug, an mod IO::Socket::INET bug, a busy server, or programmer error. If you figure out how to fix that please let me know.
Actually, root.rwhois.net. 891 A 198.41.1.7 root.rwhois.net. 891 A 198.41.1.6 This is your problem: twist:chris {149} telnet 198.41.1.7 4321 Trying 198.41.1.7... telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Connection refused twist:chris {150} telnet 198.41.1.6 4321 Trying 198.41.1.6... Connected to 198.41.1.6. Escape character is '^]'. %rwhois V-1.5:003eff:00 root.rwhois.net (by Network Solutions, Inc. V-1.5.2rri-dl)
I'm curious if anyone will find this useful, and/or if I just duplicated stuff that was already available. If it is useful I can probably extend it more, right now it's pretty utilitarian.
Except for the server that doesn't answer, I think rwhois is much more useful because it is definitely faster and doesn't give me messages like: * * WELCOME to InterNIC Registration Services * * Sorry, the system load is temporarily too heavy. * * Please wait a while and try again. Thanks * --- http://www.adbusters.org/
In the new features department. On the web page I've been working on you can now find all the domains someone for which someone is a contact. Simply look up the handle, and then follow the links to see all the domains for which they are listed. Incidently I fixed a few problems where trash in the database was causing great problems, I think it's fairly stable now. http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/rwhois.cgi http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/rwhois.txt -- Leo Bicknell - bicknell@dimension.net Network Engineer (CCIE #3440) - Dimension Enterprises 1-703-709-7500, fax, 1-703-709-7699
I just had one of those not so surprising surprising discoveries. You can also query network data with rwhois, no need for separate servers. Unfortunately my script previously ignored all network data. I have now added the code to print out network information so you can enter network numbers and get data back. The unified network has returned. I definately want to talk with a rwhois expert now, I'm puzzled why I can search on "Server" for forward DNS servers, but not on "In-Addr-Server" for reverse DNS server. That would be handy too. As always, http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/rwhois.cgi -- Leo Bicknell - bicknell@dimension.net Network Engineer (CCIE #3440) - Dimension Enterprises 1-703-709-7500, fax, 1-703-709-7699
participants (3)
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Chris Cappuccio -
Jim Fleming -
Leo Bicknell