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LIS Notes: IP number ranges, NICs, and whois Servers |
In The Net, the 1995 feature film with Sandra Bullock and Jeremy Northam, Bullock's character uses an Internet utility called "whois" to determine the identities of people in a chat group. In fact, the whois utility is a service offered by various Network Information Centers (NICs) and by national agencies responsible for assigning Internet numbers and domain names in their countries. A whois server is an interface to a directory of domain names and IP numbers. It can tell you who owns a site, but not the identities of specific users on the Net.
The UNIX whois program
existed on the Internet before there was a World Wide Web. Here are some
agencies which maintain whois servers with Web interfaces.
| American
Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN)
APNIC (Asia Pacific Network Information Centre) |
Internet
Assigned Numbers Authority
The IANA Web site explains the assignment of various broad ranges of IP numbers. For additional details, begin by consulting RFC 1466, RFC 2373, and RFC 2374. |
Copyright Christopher
Brown-Syed 2002. Disclaimers.