[address-policy-wg] WHOIS replacement, was RE: Registry - not a policy proposal

Michael,

On Wed, 2010-06-02 at 15:07 +0100, michael.dillon at bt.com wrote:

> > I believe that this is not always the best solution. Although this is
> > generally good idea when user is querying registry using some API with
> > well-defined output, I can imagine that simple redirection of text-
> > based
> > whois output from other registry can confuse the querying software.
> 
> This is why RIPE and the other 4 RIRs should get together and replace
> the obsolete and inadequate text whois protocol. ARIN has already moved
> away from text whois with a RESTful protocol that outputs the whois
> directory info in an XML format.
> 
> If all RIRs would support the same protocol, then referral could be done
> seamlessly. Even if the inquiry comes in on the obsolete text whois
> protocol, the RIR will be able to decode "foreign" whois lookups
> the same way as they decode "local" ones.

This protocol already exists. The RIPE NCC even ran a test server for a
while:

http://www.ripe.net/db/iris-pilot/

Some of the information links are broken, and the server doesn't appear
to be up any more.

The best place to look is probably the IETF CRISP working group RFCs:

http://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/crisp/

The "requirements" document gives some useful background:

http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc3707/



Full disclosure: I worked at both ARIN and the RIPE NCC during the times
when a WHOIS replacement was envisioned and developed.

The effort to implement IRIS was largely unsuccessful, but not because
of missing technology IMHO. It was largely because nobody cares. The
problems it solves are real, but they are not any organization's primary
concerns.

For my part, I'd be more than happy to help re-vamp the attempt to
replace WHOIS, but I'm not sure it would do much good.

--
Shane