The information you can get from this service is not easy to interpret. We know it. This is because the Internet is made by many different actors, not always well coordinated, and also because there is no technical standard to retrieve information.
Several organizations keep databases about Internet data:
Like AFNIC, which manages ".fr" (France) or DENIC which manages ".de" (Germany). They typically keep track of the registrants and the contacts (technical and administrative) for the domain names they register. So you can know, for instance, that "example.fr" is registered by such company and they can be reached at durand@example.fr.
Many national domain registries, specially in the less-developped countries, do not keep such data in a database and therefore do not serve it on the Internet.
Like Afilias for ".org". Some of these registries are thick registries: they keep the database in a central place and they can distribute it. Some, like the ".com" registry, are thin registries. They keep only pointers to registrars, which are resellers. The real information in at the registrar.
Our information service should automatically direct any request for a generic domain to the proper registrar.
Like RIPE-NCC. They allocate IP
addresses (like 80.67.168.1 or
2001:660::53:1) to Internet providers (called the Local
Internet Registries, or LIR) which in turn allocate them to customers.
Our information service should automatically direct any request for an IP address to the proper RIR (they are currently four or them).
There is no standard of quality for the data stored in the various
registries: it is very common for the data to be obsolete, or even
wrong from the beginning, sometimes on purpose (for privacy reasons,
for instance).
There is no real standard ontology in the registry business. It is
too tied to the specific business rules each registry uses.
For the same reason, the vocabulary is far from being standard and
can be misleading: "owner", for instance, for people who rent
a domain name.
Our information service uses the "whois" protocol, specified in a
document called
RFC 954
. With "whois", there is no standard format
for the data. Do not be surprised by the different outputs.
An effort is going on at the IETF to produce a more advanced standard: CRISP. It is far from being ready.
People who like the technical details may learn more.
Warning: results sent by this service comes directly from foreign
whois servers that we do not control. That's why they can be in many
languages, for instance.
(French) Attention : les résultats affichés par ce service viennent
directement de serveurs whois étrangers que nous ne contrôlons
pas. C'est pourquoi ils peuvent être dans des langues différentes.
Contact Generic NIC team for every question.
Ontology
Technical standards to retrieve information
Options of the form
Hosted by AFNIC, the .fr registry.