Abstract

This document presents extensions to the Whois protocol output format which enables a possibility for the server to send referal information to the Whois client. This referal mechanism can be used for example in a situation with a registrar/registry model, where the registrars all have their own Whois databases, and together they serve a whole TLD. It can also be used when implementing a root-whois service on top of all whois servers in the world, and this way enable the possibility of creating advanced proxy services. For the latter, a registration procedure is also suggested, where Whois services can be registered. Discussion on this Internet-Draft is to be held on the mailing list ietf-whois-ext@imc.org, which is hosted by the Internet Mail Consortium. To subscribe, send an email to ietf-whois-ext-request@imc.org, with the text 'subscribe' as the only word in the body of the mail. There is an archive of the mailing list at <http://www.imc.org/ietf-whois-ext/>.

Authors

Mark Kosters (markk@netsol.com)
Patrik Fältström (paf@cisco.com)

(Note: The e-mail addresses provided for the authors of this Internet-Draft may no longer be valid.)