One document matched: draft-yevstifeyev-whois-rfc3912bis-00.txt

 



INTERNET-DRAFT                                       M. Yevstifeyev, Ed.
Intended Status: Standards Track                            May 13, 2011
Obsoletes: 3912 (if approved)                                           
Expires: November 14, 2011                                              

                     WHOIS Protocol Specification 
                 draft-yevstifeyev-whois-rfc3912bis-00

Abstract

   This document is a specification of the WHOIS protocol.  It obsoletes
   and supersedes RFC 3912.


Status of this Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted to IETF in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

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Copyright and License Notice

   Copyright (c) 2011 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors. All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
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   include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
 


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   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
   described in the Simplified BSD License.


Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
      1.1. Referral Whois (RWhois) et al.  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
      1.2. Lack of Protocol Design Attributes  . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
   2. Protocol Specification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
   3. WHOIS Servers Discovery  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
      3.1. Server Names Aliases under whois-servers.net  . . . . . . . 4
      3.2. Use of DNS SRV Record . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
      3.3. WHOIS Lookup at whois.iana.org  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
   4.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
   5.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
   6.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
      6.1.  Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
      6.2.  Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
   Appendix A.  Acknowledgments  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6


1.  Introduction

   WHOIS (pronounced as the phrase "who is") is an application-layer
   (Layer 7 in Open Systems Interconnection Basic Reference Model
   [OSI]), TCP-based, query-and-response protocol used to provide
   information services to Internet users.  Initially, WHOIS protocol
   was intended to be used to obtain information about the registered
   users or assignees of an Internet resource, such as a domain name, an
   IP address block, or an autonomous system.  Yet, current
   implementations cover a much broader range of information services. 
   WHOIS protocol is designed to deliver information in human-readable
   form.

   WHOIS protocol was initially specified in RFC 812 [RFC0812], that has
   been obsoleted by RFC 954 [RFC0954] and, then, RFC 3912 [RFC3912],
   that is the most current specification.  This document supersedes RFC
   3912; it also requests to move RFC 812 and RFC 954 to Historic
   status, per RFC 2026 [RFC2026].  This document also updates the
   registration of TCP well-known port 43, used by WHOIS.

1.1. Referral Whois (RWhois) et al.

   Referral Whois (RWhois) is an extension to WHOIS protocol designed to
   extend its concepts in a scalable, hierarchical fashion, creating a
   system with a tree-like architecture.  RFC 1714 [RFC1714] defined
 


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   version 1.0 of RWhois, whereas the most current specification - RFC
   2167 [RFC2167] - documents RWhois 1.5.  Visit these documents for
   architectural and technical description of this protocol.  

   There were also another WHOIS extension deployed - WHOIS++.  RFC 1835
   [RFC1835] serves as a specification for it.  Currently, WHOIS++
   protocol is considered to be deprecated; its specification bears
   Historic status.

1.2. Lack of Protocol Design Attributes

   For historic reasons, WHOIS lacks many of the protocol design
   attributes, for example internationalization and strong security,
   that would be expected from any recently-designed IETF protocol. 
   This document does not attempt to rectify any of those shortcomings. 
   Instead, this memo documents the WHOIS protocol as it is.  


2. Protocol Specification

   WHOIS server listens for incoming connections on TCP well-known port
   43.  WHOIS client establishes TCP connection [RFC0793] on the
   aforementioned port and then sends a text request to the WHOIS
   server.  The request is a single line of ASCII [ASCII] text,
   terminated by CRLF - carriage return (ASCII character 0x0D) followed
   by line feed (ASCII character 0x0A).  The WHOIS request is described
   using ABNF [RFC5234] in the <whois-request> rule below:

   whois-request = 1*VCHAR CRLF

   where <VCHAR> and <CRLF> are specified in Appendix B.1 of RFC 5234. 
   The semantics of the request is that it contains data identifying
   what information should be sent back in response to it.

   After WHOIS server has received a request, it sends back a response,
   that might contain one or more lines of ASCII text, each of them
   terminated by CRLF (thus, CRLF does not indicate the end of
   response).  WHOIS response is described in <whois-response> ABNF rule
   below:

   whois-response = 1*(1*VCHAR CRLF)

   where <VCHAR> and <CRLF> are specified in Appendix B.1 of RFC 5234. 
   The semantics of the response is that it contains information about
   what has been requested in the request.

   As soon as WHOIS server has sent all lines of its response, it closes
   TCP connection.
 


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3. WHOIS Servers Discovery

   Currently, there are three common ways of discovery of WHOIS servers;
   however, none of them are considered to be a standard preferred way.

3.1. Server Names Aliases under whois-servers.net

   whois-servers.net provides DNS alias records for top-level domains
   (TLD) [RFC1591] WHOIS servers in the form of <tld>.whois-servers.net,
   where <tld> is a TLD name.  Therefore "us.whois-servers.net" is an
   alias for "whois.nic.us".

3.2. Use of DNS SRV Record

   DNS SRV record [RFC2782] may be used to advertise WHOIS servers,
   where <service> part of the record is equal to "nicname", <proto> is
   equal to "tcp" and the <name> containing some TLD name.  An example
   of such DNS record is:

   _nicname._tcp.us 86400 IN SRV 0 5 43 whois.nic.us.

3.3. WHOIS Lookup at whois.iana.org

   IANA currently maintains the server - whois.iana.org - that provides
   information on each TLD (sent to it as a request), including the
   WHOIS server.  Ie., the WHOIS response to the request containing
   "com" will return information about the com domain name authority;
   the address of WHOIS server will also appear in the response.


4.  Security Considerations

   The WHOIS protocol has no provisions for strong security.  WHOIS
   lacks mechanisms for access control, integrity, and confidentiality. 
    Accordingly, WHOIS-based services should only be used for
   information which is non-sensitive and intended to be accessible to
   everyone.  The absence of such security mechanisms means this
   protocol would not normally be acceptable to the IETF at the time of
   this writing.


5.  IANA Considerations

   IANA is asked to update the registration of TCP well-known port 43
   with a reference to this document.

   IANA has also been maintaining the whois.iana.org server (see Section
   3.3); this document makes no request concerning it.
 


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6.  References

6.1.  Normative References

   [ASCII]    American National Standards Institute (ANSI), "Coded
              Character Set - 7-bit American Standard Code for
              Information Interchange", ANSI X3.4, 1968.

   [RFC0793]  Postel, J., "Transmission Control Protocol", STD 7,
              RFC 793, September 1981.

   [RFC5234]  Crocker, D., Ed., and P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for
              Syntax Specifications: ABNF", STD 68, RFC 5234, January
              2008.

6.2.  Informative References

   [OSI]      International Organization for Standardization (ISO),
              "Information technology - Open Systems Interconnection -
              Basic Reference Model: The Basic Model," ISO/IEC 7498-1,
              November 1994.

   [RFC0812]  Harrenstien, K. and V. White, "NICNAME/WHOIS", RFC 812,
              March 1982. Obsoleted by RFC0954, RFC3912.

   [RFC0954]  Harrenstien, K., Stahl, M., and E. Feinler,
              "NICNAME/WHOIS", RFC 954, October 1985. Obsoleted by
              RFC3912.

   [RFC1591]  Postel, J., "Domain Name System Structure and Delegation",
              RFC 1591, March 1994.

   [RFC1714]  Williamson, S. and M. Kosters, "Referral Whois Protocol
              (RWhois)", RFC 1714, November 1994. Obsoleted by RFC2167.

   [RFC1835]  Deutsch, P., Schoultz, R., Faltstrom, P., and C. Weider,
              "Architecture of the WHOIS++ service", RFC 1835, August
              1995.

   [RFC2167]  Williamson, S., Kosters, M., Blacka, D., Singh, J., and K.
              Zeilstra, "Referral Whois (RWhois) Protocol V1.5",
              RFC 2167, June 1997.

   [RFC2026]  Bradner, S., "The Internet Standards Process -- Revision
              3", BCP 9, RFC 2026, October 1996.

   [RFC2782]  Gulbrandsen, A., Vixie, P., and L. Esibov, "A DNS RR for
              specifying the location of services (DNS SRV)", RFC 2782,
 


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              February 2000.

   [RFC3912]  Daigle, L., "WHOIS Protocol Specification", RFC 3912,
              September 2004.


Appendix A.  Acknowledgments

   Ken Harrenstien, Vic White, Mary Stahl, Elizabeth Feinler and Leslie
   Daigle authored of the predecessors of this document - RFC 812, RFC
   954 and RFC 3912.  This document reuses some text from RFC 3912.


Authors' Addresses

   Mykyta Yevstifeyev (editor)
   8 Kuzovkov St., flat 25
   Kotovsk
   Ukraine

   EMail: evnikita2@gmail.com






























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