[dbwg] whois referral to RIPE

[william(at)elan.net]

The better question is why did ARIN stop showing
 ReferralServer: whois://whois.ripe.net:43/

As I have already noted many times ReferralServer should be field used for 
standard reference to external whois services (whois, rwhois, future crisp)
so that when software being used supports such protocol and such reference,
it can follow the referral  And comments should be used as guide for users
that do not have this software and that will most likely see the information
from the webbrowser - and in that case ARIN putting reference in comments 
to http://www.ripe.net/whois is quite appropriate.

On Mon, 1 Mar 2004, WP (John) wrote:

> Dear ARIN / dbwg,
> 
> ARIN has recently altered the way it refers queries to
> RIPE, and has ceased putting "whois.ripe.net" in a
> comment when queried for a RIPE IP number. ARIN now
> gives ONLY the URL http://www.ripe.net/whois (in a
> comment). Why has the pointer to the port 43 whois
> been removed?
> 
> For APNIC, ARIN's comment contains:
> 
>  Comment:    For details, refer to the APNIC Whois
> Database via
>  Comment:    WHOIS.APNIC.NET or
> http://www.apnic.net/apnic-bin/whois2.pl
> 
> For LACNIC:
> 
>  Comment: Please see http://www.lacnic.net/ for
> further details,
>  Comment: or check the WHOIS server located at
> whois.lacnic.net
> 
> For RIPE:
> 
>  Comment: These addresses have been further assigned
> to users in
>  Comment: the RIPE NCC region. Contact information can
> be found
>  Comment: in the RIPE database at
> http://www.ripe.net/whois
> 
> My question is then, why does ARIN now behave
> differently for RIPE ?
> Why is there no longer any mention of whois.ripe.net ?
> 
> Note further that CRSNic.net has a field in their
> output that looks
> like:
>    Whois Server: whois.[someserver].com
> which a program can detect, and direct itself to. Why
> don't the RIRs
> do the same?
> 
> I would suggest that ARIN should provide an
> easy-to-detect "Whois Server" field, or at the very
> least, a consistent reference to to the appropriate
> RIR's whois, including RIPE in its "Comment" fields.
> 
> thank you,
> 
> 
> 
> =====
> John Bro <whoisproxy at yahoo.com>
> http://wp-whois-proxy.sourceforge.net/
> 
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