Background Traditionally, Whois services were offered using the NICNAME/WHOIS protocol as described by RFC 954 and RFC 3912. This protocol is a simple, text-based TCP protocol registered with in the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) for well-known port 43. The specification for the protocol, RFC 3912, did not define either data types or data formats. As a consequence, Whois data varied from service provider to service provider and was far from ideal for programmatic consumption. Cons...
