As of 28 January 2025, the Registration Data Access Protocol (RDAP) will be the definitive source for delivering generic top-level domain name (gTLD) registration information in place of sunsetted WHOIS services. RDAP offers several advantages over WHOIS including support for internationalization, secure access to data, authoritative service discovery, and the ability to provide differentiated access
21 Comments
CaffeineLD50
I havent had a successful use of whois in probably over a decade. What was once a useful tool was destroyed by spammers harvesting email addresses and privacy oriented registrars.
I won't even notice its gone
vekatimest
To be replaced with a system providing a standardized method to give law enforcement easier "secure access" to your redacted personal information.
brown
RDAP replaces WHOIS, offering a more technologically advanced way to discover the domain is protected by privacy services.
gkoberger
Wow. I never noticed how much how I used the internet changed. I haven’t done a WHOIS in a decade.
When I started using the internet, it’s how I contacted people. If I liked their site or their blog, I’d check who was behind it and get an email address I could contact.
Now… humans don’t really own domains anymore. Content is so centralized. I obviously noticed this shift, but I had forgotten how I used to be able to interact with the internet.
OutOfHere
These days how can one register a domain anonymously, using crypto as payment, and without KYC?
qrush
What does this mean for the command line tool whois? It definitely works still and it's still being updated…
> whois ycombinator.com
% IANA WHOIS server
% for more information on IANA, visit http://www.iana.org
% This query returned 1 object
refer: whois.verisign-grs.com
domain: COM
organisation: VeriSign Global Registry Services
address: 12061 Bluemont Way
address: Reston VA 20190
address: United States of America (the)
contact: administrative
name: Registry Customer Service
organisation: VeriSign Global Registry Services
address: 12061 Bluemont Way
address: Reston VA 20190
address: United States of America (the)
phone: +1 703 925-6999
fax-no: +1 703 948 3978
e-mail: info@verisign-grs.com
contact: technical
name: Registry Customer Service
organisation: VeriSign Global Registry Services
address: 12061 Bluemont Way
address: Reston VA 20190
address: United States of America (the)
phone: +1 703 925-6999
fax-no: +1 703 948 3978
e-mail: info@verisign-grs.com
nserver: A.GTLD-SERVERS.NET 192.5.6.30 2001:503:a83e:0:0:0:2:30
nserver: B.GTLD-SERVERS.NET 192.33.14.30 2001:503:231d:0:0:0:2:30
nserver: C.GTLD-SERVERS.NET 192.26.92.30 2001:503:83eb:0:0:0:0:30
nserver: D.GTLD-SERVERS.NET 192.31.80.30 2001:500:856e:0:0:0:0:30
nserver: E.GTLD-SERVERS.NET 192.12.94.30 2001:502:1ca1:0:0:0:0:30
nserver: F.GTLD-SERVERS.NET 192.35.51.30 2001:503:d414:0:0:0:0:30
nserver: G.GTLD-SERVERS.NET 192.42.93.30 2001:503:eea3:0:0:0:0:30
nserver: H.GTLD-SERVERS.NET 192.54.112.30 2001:502:8cc:0:0:0:0:30
nserver: I.GTLD-SERVERS.NET 192.43.172.30 2001:503:39c1:0:0:0:0:30
nserver: J.GTLD-SERVERS.NET 192.48.79.30 2001:502:7094:0:0:0:0:30
nserver: K.GTLD-SERVERS.NET 192.52.178.30 2001:503:d2d:0:0:0:0:30
nserver: L.GTLD-SERVERS.NET 192.41.162.30 2001:500:d937:0:0:0:0:30
nserver: M.GTLD-SERVERS.NET 192.55.83.30 2001:501:b1f9:0:0:0:0:30
ds-rdata: 19718 13 2 8acbb0cd28f41250a80a491389424d341522d946b0da0c0291f2d3d771d7805a
whois: whois.verisign-grs.com
status: ACTIVE
remarks: Registration information: http://www.verisigninc.com
created: 1985-01-01
changed: 2023-12-07
source: IANA
# whois.verisign-grs.com
>>> Last update of whois database: 2025-03-17T01:27:31Z <<<
smoyer
When can I finally see an article announcing that ICANN has been sunsetted?
notepad0x90
Whois needs it's own port open usually, this is good I suppose, now it's all HTTPS. Now, if only passive dns resolution data was part of this same api. As it stands today, if you're looking into WHOIS information, historical WHOIS and passive dns are a must, and they are usually provided by commercial entities.
technopol
This seems like it would break things.
transcriptase
The concept of WHOIS has felt sleazy for many years.
If I register a domain, the registrar will basically extort me a couple extra dollars per year for “domain privacy” for the privilege of not having my name, home address, phone number, and email publicly available and then mirrored across thousands of shady scraped content sites in perpetuity. Even If you don’t care about that, then begins the never ending emails texts and calls begin from sleazy outfits who want to sell you related domains, do SEO for you, revamp your site, schedule a call, or just fill your spam box up with legitimate scams and bootleg pharma trash.
All because you wanted a $10/year dot com without paying the bribe.
And yes I grew up leafing through well worn phone books next to corded phones. This is not comparable.
1970-01-01
I don't play with domains all day, but this very much feels like nothing important was accomplished, and things are just being made more complicated for political reasons. Sorry if that is being harsh, but I've never had any issue using WHOIS.
bravetraveler
If distribution packages don't abstract this trivia away I'm going to be endlessly frustrated
phendrenad2
Most people won't even notice this change. They'll still go to a "whois lookup service" and input a domain, and get the same results. The fact that it arrived via a different protocol (RDAP) won't mean anything.
throwaway150
There's something about WHOIS I've never understood. If you run `whois ycombinator.com` you'll see name servers in the output.
But if you run `dig ycombinator.com ANY +noall +answer` you'll see name servers here too.
If you see all the output together, you'll find the same name servers are present in WHOIS output and the DNS NS records. But wait, there's more.
The name server `ns-225.awsdns-28.com` is present three times- in WHOIS, in DNS NS records, in DNS SOA record.
Which of these name servers get used to resolve `ycombinator.com` to its IP address like when I do `ping ycombinator.com`?
What if the information between the WHOIS and DNS NS records and the DNS SOA records are inconsistent? Which record wins?
nine_k
Back in 2014, when TLD .church was introduced, me and my friends tried to register alonzo.church and (ab)use the contact information records to provide some biographic information and links, explaining literally whois alonzo.church on the command line. That would not prevent hosting whatever services on that domain as normal.
Sadly, we were not able to secure the domain on time, and after 11 years, the attempted trick is becoming irrelevant.
TZubiri
I wasn't aware of rdap.
Anyone experienced with this, I am not seeing abuse contact info, usually a phone number or email. Am i supposed to follow hyperlinks to get this info or something? Like search the registrar for this data?
chrisallick
r dap me up
oefrha
People say WHOIS is useless these days due to WHOIS privacy, but it's useful for at least one thing: checking when a domain was registered/transferred. Fishy stuff tend to be registered/transferred recently. Also older and larger companies tend to not hide their organizational identity.
Btw, I tried the icann-rdap CLI tool and the default rendered-markdown output mode is atrocious. Sea of output, each nameserver has one or more standalone tables taking up 15x$repetition lines, almost impossible to fish out useful info. The retro gtld-whois mode is so much cleaner. Their web tool https://lookup.icann.org/en/lookup is fine too, don't know why the rendered markdown mode isn't like that. WTF.
whalesalad
check out the rdap deployment dashboard – https://deployment.rdap.org/
it's still unsupported by a lot of tld's and the rate limits are atrocious. some registrar's only allow 10 requests per day and will group huge netblocks into one single block.
rootsudo
wow! something I didn't expect to read today, or in the near future.
charcircuit
ICANN's DNS servers is one of the only systems on the internet that requires people to continually pay money to have a name. X, YouTube, Facebook, Reddit, Twitch, etc all let you register a name for free and without submitting all of your personal information. The entire model here is outdated with what users want.