RFC 3912

RFC 3912: WHOIS Protocol Specification 🎀

okay bestie, this is RFC 3912 and it's all about the WHOIS protocol 💖 🦋

• Number and title: RFC 3912, WHOIS Protocol Specification
• Author: L. Daigle (Leslie Daigle) from VeriSign, Inc. 💅
• Date: September 2004 🌸
• Category: Standards Track ✨
• Obsoletes: RFC 954 and RFC 812 💀, which means this one replaces both of them
• Updates: nothing listed in the title block

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Status of This Memo

okay so this document is an Internet standards track protocol spec for the whole Internet community 👑. It wants discussion and suggestions for improvements 💬. If you want the current standardization state and status, check the "Internet Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) 📋. Distribution of this memo is unlimited 🌈.

Copyright Notice

Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2004) 🎀

Abstract

this doc updates the WHOIS spec and obsoletes RFC 954 ✨. the goal is to drop the stuff from 954 that isn't about the on-the-wire protocol and doesn't really fit today's Internet 🧹. it does NOT try to change the protocol itself, and it doesn't document the other uses of WHOIS that popped up after 954 came out 🙈.

1. Introduction ✨

WHOIS is a TCP-based, transaction-oriented query/response protocol 🦋. It's used all over the place to give Internet users information 🌍. It started out as "white pages" stuff and info about registered domain names, but now it covers a much bigger range of information services 🧚. The protocol delivers its content in a human-readable format 📖. This doc updates the WHOIS spec and obsoletes RFC 954 [1] 💜.

okay but here's the tea 🍵: WHOIS doesn't have a lot of the design stuff you'd expect from a newer IETF protocol, like internationalisation and strong security 😭. this document doesn't fix any of that 🙅‍♀️. instead it documents WHOIS as it is 📸. it does call out some well-known shortcomings in a few places 👀. the work on protocols that could actually fix those shortcomings is happening in a separate IETF activity, the CRISP Working Group 🔥.

2. Protocol Specification 🌸

a WHOIS server listens on TCP port 43 for requests from WHOIS clients 🔌. the client sends a text request, and the server replies with text 💬. every request ends with ASCII CR and then ASCII LF 🎀. the response can have more than one line, so seeing CR or LF characters in it does NOT mean the response is over 🙈. the server closes its connection as soon as the output is done 🔚. that closed TCP connection is how the client knows it got the whole response 💅.

3. Protocol Example 🧚

say you send a request to the WHOIS server at whois.nic.mil asking about "Smith" 💌. here's what the packets on the wire look like 📦:

client                           server at whois.nic.mil

open TCP   ---- (SYN) ------------------------------>
           <---- (SYN+ACK) -------------------------
send query ---- "Smith<CR><LF>" -------------------->
get answer <---- "Info about Smith<CR><LF>" ---------
           <---- "More info about Smith<CR><LF>" ----
close      <---- (FIN) ------------------------------
           ----- (FIN) ----------------------------->

4. Internationalisation 🌏

WHOIS has not been internationalised 😬. there's no mechanism for saying which character set is in use 🤷‍♀️. originally the main encoding was US-ASCII 🔤. in practice though, some WHOIS servers (especially ones outside the USA) might be using some other character set for requests, replies, or both 🌍. not being able to predict or express the text encoding has hurt interoperability, and therefore usefulness, a lot 😩.

5. Security Considerations 🚨

⚠️ bestie, read this part carefully. WHOIS has NO provisions for strong security 💀. it has no access control, no integrity, and no confidentiality. so WHOIS-based services should only be used for information that isn't sensitive and is meant to be accessible to everyone 🔒.

the lack of these security mechanisms means this protocol would not normally be acceptable to the IETF at the time of writing 😭🔥.

6. Acknowledgements 🫶

Ran Atkinson made an earlier version of this document 🎀. Ken Harrenstien, Mary Stahl, and Elizabeth Feinler were the authors of the original Draft Standard for WHOIS 👑.

7. References 📚

7.1. Normative References

[1]  Harrenstien, K., Stahl, M., and E. Feinler, "NICNAME/WHOIS", RFC
     954, October 1985.

Author's Address 💌

Leslie Daigle
VeriSign, Inc.
21355 Ridgetop Circle
Dulles, VA  20166
US

EMail: leslie@verisignlabs.com; leslie@thinkingcat.com

Full Copyright Statement ©️

Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2004) 💜

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Acknowledgement 🌈

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