Who Is

"Who Is" searches the InterNIC (Internet Network Information Center) Database of registered names allowing you to find the organization and administrative contact responsible for networks with registered domain names.

For example, if you discover a routing problem in accessing "www.sustworks.com", you can use "Who Is" to find out who is responsible for "sustworks.com". The information returned will normally include the email address of an administrative contact to be notified in case of connectivity problems.

If the response to a whois query lists an alternate "Whois Server:", copy this to the Server Name Field and press the Query button again.

Many international domain names (outside the United States) are not registered by the InterNIC. If a Whois query does not find a matching database entry, you may need to specify an alternate Whois Server by entering the appropriate server address or name. Often, you can find the appropriate Whois Server by entering a Whois query for the top level domain. For example, to lookup who is "liu.se", you would first lookup who is "SE-DOM" (the top level "se" domain). The information returned will usually include one or more references to the domain name of the organization that administers that domain. In our example, this would be "sunet.se" and doing a name server lookup on "whois.sunet.se" returns the address of the appropriate Whois Server.

A popup menu keeps a list of Recent Targets or history. The contents of the target field are added to the list when a test to that target is invoked. If the recent targets menu becomes full (10 entries), the least recently used item will be removed. To add or remove an item, or clear the entire list, use the corresponding selections from the History menu. A default list of Whois servers is added each time the application is launched.

Whois can be used to search for other information as well. Most Whois servers will provide further instructions if you send an empty Whois query.

When you invoke one window from another, the corresponding data is automatically transferred. Invoke the Ping window from the Window menu (Cmd-T) to begin a ping test to the Whois Server address.

You can open and use multiple Who Is windows at the same time.