NAME
ipw - get IP address whois information
SYNOPSIS
ipw [-a] [-n] [-c] [-C] [-t] [-v] [-T secs] address
ipw [-a] [-n] [-c] [-C] [-t] [-v] [-T secs] host
ipw [-a] [-n] [-c] [-C] [-t] [-v] [-T secs] handle
DESCRIPTION
The ipw program attempts to obtain the most relevant IP address regis-
tration record for a given IP address. It does so by trying each of
several major WHOIS servers, in turn, until it finds a relevant record.
The WHOIS servers that are consulted for IP address registration
records are:
whois.arin.net
whois.ripe.net
whois.apnic.net
whois.aunic.net
If any of these contains a relevant registration record for the given
IP address, that record will be printed to stdout. By default, the
entire registration record is printed to stdout, unless any combination
of the -a, -n, or -t options are given; in which case only the specific
information requested is displayed.
If the case of ARIN registration records, if there are multiple regis-
tration records covering address ranges which include the given IP
address, then the record relating to the numerically smallest such
IP address range is selected and then printed to stdout.
Note that ``handle'' may be prefixed with "ARIN:", "RIPE:", "APNIC:",
or "AUNIC:" (case sensitive) in order to manually select a whois
server when searching by nic handle. Normally, each of the whois
servers is consulted consecutively until a match is found for a given
nic handle, because a handle by itself does not include enough
information to automatically select the most appropriate server.
These prefixes are included in the output generated by the -n option.
The -a option selects IP address range mode. In this mode, the
smallest enclosing address range is printed to stdout, rather than
the entire registration record.
The -n option selects nic-handle mode, where the "handle", or name,
for the specified netblock is printed to stdout. The -N option also
selects nic-handle mode, but generates a prefix to the handle that
indicates which registry the handle belongs to (see above).
The -c option selects contacts mode. In this mode, the relevant
contact E-mail addresses are printed to stdout, rather than the entire
registration record. If there is more than one contact E-mail address
in the relevant registration record, then sequential addresses will
be separated by a comma and a space on stdout.
The -C option is just like the -c option, except that the block con-
tact E-mail addresses are output one per line, rather than all on a
single line separated by commas.
The -t option is present only for reasons of backward compatability.
It has the exact same effect as the -c option described above.
The -T option may be used to adjust the timeout period (in seconds)
used when attempting to connect to the various WHOIS servers. The
default timeout used when no -t option is specified is 0, which is
treated as actually representing infinity (i.e. no timeout). Note
however that the underlying TCP protocol may generate a timeout in
some cases.
NOTES
A valid Internet hostname may be given in place of the IP address
argument, in which case that hostname will be looked-up using DNS
and the registration record search will be applied to the first
registered IP address associated with that hostname.
There are many valid IP addresses for which no relevant registration
records exist. For example, addresses in the 10.0.0.0/8 address
block and addresses in the 192.168/16 address block have no relevant
registration records. There are many other such ranges.
Ideally, when the input is an ARIN, RIPE, or APNIC handle, we should
check to see if it has a prefix or suffix that might tip us off as
to which of these three registries we should look up the handle in
first. Normally, we will attempt lookups in ARIN, then RIPE, and then
APNIC, but the following handle suffixes and prefixes could help us
to avoid many pointless lookups:
RIPE suffixes and prefixes:
*-RIPE
*-NO
AT-*
SE-*
FR-*
DE-*
IT-*
RU-*
SK-*
APNIC suffixes:
*-AP
*-JP
*-AU (Data actually in the AUNIC!)
*-TW
*-CN
*-NZ
*-TH
*-MY
*-MN
*-ID
*-HK
*-SG
RETURN VALUE
Ipw will exit with a zero (0) status code if all goes well, or with a
one (1) if no relevant registration records for the given IP address
were found, or two (2) if there were any sort of internal or communica-
tions errors.
VERSION
3.3a
AUTHOR
Ronald F. Guilmette <rfg@monkeys.com>
Contributions by Marty Bower <marty@mjhb.marina-del-rey.ca.us>
