[arin-announce] ARIN's RESTful Whois Directory Service Available 26 June

[Member Services]

ARIN is deploying an improved Whois service called Whois-RWS on 26 June 
2010. Included in the deployment are the following services that provide 
the general public with access to ARIN's registration data.

* a RESTful Web Service (RWS)
* a NICNAME/WHOIS port 43 service
* a user-friendly web site (http://whois.arin.net)

When using Whois-RWS you will notice some differences in behavior for 
certain queries and corresponding result sets on the NICNAME/WHOIS TCP 
port 43 service. These minor differences are documented at:

https://www.arin.net/resources/whoisrws/whois_diff.html

ARIN’s Directory Service for registration data has used the 
NICNAME/WHOIS protocol since its inception. The limitations of the 
NICNAME/WHOIS protocol are well known and documented in RFC3912.
Whois-RWS was created as an alternative to the ARIN Whois and will 
provide much richer functionality and capability to the community.

Whois-RWS can easily be integrated into command line scripts, or it can 
be used with a web browser, which makes it applicable for programmatic 
consumption and accessible for interactive use. ARIN will continue to 
maintain services for the NICNAME/WHOIS protocol on TCP/43. This is 
achieved by using a proxy service to translate traditional ARIN Whois 
queries into Whois-RWS queries. However, ARIN recommends use of the 
RESTful Web Service.

Those who choose to use the Whois-RWS Proxy will find it has many 
features unavailable over the existing Whois service, including:

* Support for new query types such as CIDR queries
* Better feedback for ambiguous queries
* More finely scoped record type queries
* Options for NICNAME/WHOIS clients that re-interpret traditional 
parameters used by ARIN's service.
* RESTful URL references, useful for embedding into documents and e-mail
* Better grouping of record types and delineation of results

Another major benefit is that data from ARIN’s registration database is 
distributed to the Whois-RWS servers many times throughout the day, 
versus the once-a-day update of ARIN’s previous Whois service. Changes 
will be reflected more quickly through Whois-RWS, so query results will 
be more current than the previous Whois service.

ARIN continues to welcome community participation on the Whois-RWS 
mailing list, and we invite you to subscribe and provide feedback to:

http://lists.arin.net/mailman/listinfo/arin-whoisrws

Regards,


Mark Kosters
Chief Technical Officer
American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN)