Autonomous Systems Available via RIPE WHOIS

 Daniel Karrenberg <Daniel.Karrenberg at ripe.net> writes:
 * 
 * Autonomous System (AS) information is now available from the RIPE whois
 * server.  The server will accept queries for AS<number>.  Very basic
 * information about most existing ASes from the NIC and other sources has
 * been entered with a source attribute of INTERNIC and will only be found if
 * the -a flag is passed to the whois server.  This information is also
 * available as file from ftp.ripe.net in file ripe/dbase/asn.db.Z. 

Folks,

from the whois log I saw that a lot of people queried the whois daemon for AS
numbers that gave no results. For clarity, AS objects that are not in the
ripe-81 format (meaning the ones that are generated from asn.txt) should be
asked for with the "-a" flag to indicate you want to search all databases.
This because they are entered in the database with source "INTERNIC" and not
"RIPE". Leaving out the "-a" flag would only give results if the AS objects
are in the database that were send in as a normal update and NOT generated
from asn.txt.

So for people with the "RIPE" whois client:

% whois -a as200
aut-num:   AS200
descr:     BARRNET-AS
admin-c:   VAF
remarks:   generated from updated asn.txt
source:    INTERNIC

person:    Vince Fuller
phone:     +1 415 723 6860
e-mail:    VAF at STANFORD.EDU
nic-hdl:   VAF
changed:   networks.txt/network-contacts.txt 930218/930219
source:    NIC

People with a standard whois client:

% whois -h whois.ripe.net "-a as200"
[would produce the same output]

-Marten