whois syntax

Fri Oct 19 02:02:41 UTC 2001

i was arguing with my friend about whois servers.  he thought that all
whois servers were relatively similar in design and function, and i
convinced that wasn't the case.

network solutions can look up domain names and host records, along
with having a 'help' function and 'tags' you can add to your 'query'
to focus your answer.

most of the other domain registrars just do domain name queries.  i
assume they can do host queries as well, but i've not checked.  i've
not yet found one that has the same 'tagging' ability that network
solutions has.

arin.net can map network addresses (and netblock names) to the names
of the registering party, where radb.net can do that and also handles
as numbers.

the output of all of them differs (which makes parsing the output a
lot of fun :).

the thing that gets me, though, is that the radb.net whois server
seems to have some 'extended command language' whereby one can pass
query after query over one tcp connection and not get dropped.  is
this 'language' documented anywhere, or do i just have to find and
read source code that uses it?

-- 
|-----< "CODE WARRIOR" >-----|
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andrew at crossbar.com       * "information is power -- share the wealth."