WHOIS
termnetworkinggovernance & risk
The query service that answers who registered a domain or an address block - the first query-based host name and address server, defined in Feinler's group in 1982.
It began as a directory of people and machines on a network where everyone was reachable, and that origin explains its problems: a protocol with no structured schema, no authentication and no privacy model, answering in whatever text each registry chooses. Registration data was public because the early network assumed accountability rather than anonymity, and privacy law has since forced most of it behind redaction. RDAP is the structured, authenticated successor, and the transition is slow because the old one still answers.
Also known as: rdap