Death of WHOIS, Film at 11

["Ronald F. Guilmette" <rfg () tristatelogic com>]

In message <58150673.5090201 () foobar org>, 
Nick Hilliard <nick () foobar org> wrote:

> David Conrad already pointed out that this problem has been solved using
> RDAP which supports referrals.  Try installing the nicinfo command from:
>
> https://github.com/arineng/nicinfo
>
> At a guess, I'd say referrals haven't been implemented in whois because
> the whois "protocol" is unfixably broken and unsuitable for distributed
> information sharing.

So basically, you're saying that the fact that port 43 is still open and
still providing answers... known inaccurante answers... at all of the
following places is just one big tease?

    whois.iana.org
    whois.arin.net
    whois.ripe.net
    whois.apnic.net
    whois.lacnic.net
    whois.afrinic.net

So the overall game plan is to continue to have these things all give
out inaccurate and/or misleanding answers until such time as all of
the trusting old school hacks like me either die out or get the memo
telling us to just stop using this stuff?

If so, thanks for telling me.  Nobody else has so far had the courtesy
to do so.


Regards,
rfg


P.S.  Traditional WHOIS supports referrals.  For an example, try this:

     whois -h whois.iana.org 1197

(Providing referrals in traditional WHOIS isn't exactly rocket surgery.
The fact that certain RIRs may be too... umm... preoccupied to take
the time to properly populate their data bases with such referrals
notwithstanding.)