>...
>On Thursday 25 May 2006 21:31, Kai Schaetzl took the opportunity to write:
>> Jamie L. Penman-Smithson wrote on Thu, 25 May 2006 17:12:07 +0100:
>> > .de does not have a working WHOIS server, that's fundamentally broken:
>>
>> No, *your* whois client is outdated and broken.
>>
>> <snip>
>>
>> And this is not the only TLD they are wrong about. If you want to
>> follow-up, better to me directly, I think it's off-topic.
>
>You should have explained why they where wrong from the beginning. You're=20
>absolutely right. The RFC doesn't define any syntax. The evidence is totall=
>y=20
>bogus.
>
>=2D-=20
>Magnus Holmgren [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> (No Cc of list mail needed, thanks)
>...
Um... Syntax?
RFC3912 Section 3
"
3. Protocol Example
If one places a request of the WHOIS server located at whois.nic.mil
for information about "Smith", the packets on the wire will look
like:
client server at whois.nic.mil
open TCP ---- (SYN) ------------------------------>
<---- (SYN+ACK) -------------------------
send query ---- "Smith<CR><LF>" -------------------->
get answer <---- "Info about Smith<CR><LF>" ---------
<---- "More info about Smith<CR><LF>" ----
close <---- (FIN) ------------------------------
----- (FIN) ----------------------------->
"
DeNIC does not follow this protocol; However for many (even most)
domains, proper data can be gotten using *undocumented* extensions they
have added to their own Whois server. A large number of whois clients do
special case the DeNIC and ".de" domains, but this only shows that the ".de"
TLD is indeed *not* RFC compliant.
Please examine the source of any not "outdated and broken" client
and look at the code, or better look at (previous listing):
http://www.rfc-ignorant.org/tools/detail.php?domain=de&submitted=1094941143&table=whois
BTW. The many common clients use the "ISO-8859-1" character set, which only
works for a subset of the domains at DeNIC - so please don't count any of
these as "not broken" (and "US-ASCII" still doesn't work for all domains
either - just nearly all).
Oh, and for clients that follow referrals to HTTP servers (which
many country specific NICs do provide in place of Whois servers), we have:
RFC3912 Section 2
"
2. Protocol Specification
A WHOIS server listens on TCP port 43 for requests from WHOIS
clients. The WHOIS client makes a text request to the WHOIS server,
then the WHOIS server replies with text content. All requests are
terminated with ASCII CR and then ASCII LF. The response might
contain more than one line of text, so the presence of ASCII CR or
ASCII LF characters does not indicate the end of the response. The
WHOIS server closes its connection as soon as the output is finished.
The closed TCP connection is the indication to the client that the
response has been received.
"
Simply, if it isn't plain text on port 43, it isn't a RFC compliant Whois
server. Oh, and if anyone knows of an IANA registered Whois server for a
TLD that does function (I know of several which work, but aren't listed
at IANA), then an email to RFCI will get a listing removed.
Paul Shupak
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
