ietf-corpus from Lantern
rfc-3912

WHOIS Protocol Specification

L. Daigle
date2004-09 streamIETF wgnon working group statusDRAFT STANDARD pages4 canonicalhttps://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3912 doi10.17487/RFC3912
This document updates the specification of the WHOIS protocol, thereby obsoleting RFC 954. The update is intended to remove the material from RFC 954 that does not have to do with the on-the-wire protocol, and is no longer applicable in today's Internet. This document does not attempt to change or update the protocol per se, or document other uses of the protocol that have come into existence since the publication of RFC 954. [STANDARDS-TRACK]

obsoletes

Extracted elements (6)

design-rationale §1

WHOIS lacks internationalisation and strong security that would be expected from a recently-designed IETF protocol. This document does not attempt to rectify those shortcomings but documents the protocol as it is; updated capabilities are being addressed in the CRISP Working Group.

security

interoperability-note §4

The WHOIS protocol has no mechanism for indicating the character set in use. Originally US-ASCII was predominant, but some servers outside the USA use other character encodings for requests, replies, or both, adversely impacting interoperability.

protocol-element §2

The WHOIS server closes its TCP connection as soon as output is finished. The closed TCP connection is the sole indication to the client that the complete response has been received.

protocol-element §2

WHOIS is a TCP-based transaction-oriented query/response protocol. A WHOIS server listens on TCP port 43 for requests from WHOIS clients. The protocol delivers its content in a human-readable format.

dns, registry

security-consideration §5

WHOIS has no provisions for strong security: it lacks mechanisms for access control, integrity, and confidentiality. Accordingly, WHOIS-based services should only be used for non-sensitive information intended to be accessible to everyone.

security

wire-format §2

All client requests are terminated with ASCII CR followed by ASCII LF (CRLF). The response may contain multiple lines; the presence of CR or LF within the response does not indicate end of response.