High volume WHOIS queries

Tue Mar 1 09:53:42 UTC 2005

altho arguably its not up to arin to provide processing power for all these 
deployments.

if you can get a local copy why not have your clients resolve back to that?

Steve

On Tue, 1 Mar 2005, joe mcguckin wrote:

> 
> 
> How about caching the data from previous ARIN whois lookups?
> 
> I do agree that the bulk data and high volume limitations on whois servers
> are silly...
> 
> -joe
> 
> 
> On 2/28/05 1:30 PM, "Dan Lockwood" <dlockwood at shastacoe.org> wrote:
> 
> > 
> > I'm in a disagreement with ARIN about my application for bulk whois
> > data.  I've got a software program that needs resolve AS numbers to the
> > Company Name of the owner.  The software app has need to do this on a
> > very high volume.  E.g.  I run a report that returns the top 100 AS
> > destinations for my network and I want to resolve the numbers to the
> > names as part of the report generation.  Since ARIN throttles the number
> > of queries that you can execute against their servers I seems to "just
> > make sense" that you would do the processing using local data.
> > 
> > That is all fine and good, but the problem comes when I distribute the
> > software to users.  ARIN's AUP for bulk whois states:
> > 
> > "Redistributing bulk ARIN WHOIS data is explicitly forbidden. It is
> > permissible to publish the data on an individual query or
> > small number of queries at a time basis, as long as reasonable
> > precautions are taken to prevent automated querying by
> > database harvesters."
> > 
> > My original AUP application stated that I would transfer the data to the
> > users using an XML file on a regular basis.  Clearly in violation of the
> > first point.  Fine.  But now after a phone conversation they are telling
> > me that I can not operate a server to distribute the data on a "per
> > query" basis too.  Providing a server that answers whois queries just
> > like ARIN seems to be clearly permissible based on the remaining AUP
> > verbage.  At this point the only thing I can get out of the guy/gal on
> > the phone is "NO!".
> > 
> > Does anyone have any experience doing something like this?  How about a
> > sanity check?  Am I completely wrong in how I'm interpreting the AUP?
> > 
> > Thanks,
> > Dan
> > 
> 
> 