Finding Things | Whois Gateways 		Next

Whois Gateways

Whois allows you to find the physical locations of, and other information about, IP domains. An easy way to use this tool is to access a Whois Gateway, such as

http://alabanza.com/kabacoff/Inter-Links/cgi/whois.cgi,

with your browser.

Correlating Institutions with Domain Names

For example let's find out about the domain korrnet.org. Accessing the above gateway gives a display like the following into which we enter the domain "korrnet.org":

After we submit the inquiry (by pressing "Return" or "Enter", or by selecting the "Search" button), whois returns the following information: 



Whois Lookup



  Knoxville-Oak Ridge Regional Network (KORRNET-DOM)
     KORRnet/University of Tennessee
     600 Henley Street
     Suite 313 Conference Center Building
     Knoxville, TN 37996
     U.S.A.

     Domain Name: KORRNET.ORG

     Administrative Contact:
        IP Administrative Contact  (UTK-NAC)  [email protected]
        (423) 974-6616
     Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
        IP Network Technical Contact  (UTK-NTC)  [email protected]
        (423) 974-6616
     Billing Contact:
        Garritano, Tom  (TG521)  [email protected]
        (423) 974-2908

     Record last updated on 16-Feb-96.
     Record created on 16-Feb-96.
     Database last updated on 10-Sep-97 04:58:14 EDT.

     Domain servers in listed order:

     NAMESERVER.UTCC.UTK.EDU      128.169.202.79
     PUNCH.UTCC.UTK.EDU           128.169.201.2


The InterNIC Registration Services Host contains ONLY Internet
Information (Networks, ASN's, Domains, and POC's).
Please use the whois server at nic.ddn.mil for MILNET Information.


Searching on Institutional Names

The whois gateway will also often give information about networks and domains if you just give it part of a company or institutional name; for example, try each of the following entries in the whois gateway and see what it returns: (1) "microsoft", (2) "vatican", and (3) "disney".

Some More Whois Exercises

Now use the whois gateway to determine the institutions associated with the following addresses.

Hint: For DNS names, typically the last two fields correspond to the domain.

Next