From owner-freebsd-hackers  Fri Jun 22  9:25:41 2001
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Date: Fri, 22 Jun 2001 12:25:33 -0400
Subject: Re: [RFC] whois(1) - recursive IP searches
From: Mike Barcroft <mike@q9media.com>
To: Volker Stolz <stolz@i2.informatik.rwth-aachen.de>
Cc: <hackers@freebsd.org>, <phk@freebsd.org>, <joe@freebsd.org>
Message-ID: <B758E9BD.D6B%mike@q9media.com>
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On 6/22/01 4:59 AM, Volker Stolz at stolz@I2.Informatik.RWTH-Aachen.DE
wrote:

> In local.freebsd-hackers, you wrote:
>> I would appreciate comments on the following patch:
>> http://testbed.q9media.net/freebsd/whois.20010622.patch
>> 
>> o Implement recursive IP Address searches based on the results of
>> a query to ARIN.  This allows a user to type 'whois 210.139.255.223'
>> and get the expected results.
>> [Requested by joe and phk]
> 
> This and some of the other stuff discussed recently looks like what
> other people have been building into whois-*servers* like whois.thur.de
> by Lutz.Donnerhacke@Jena.Thur.De (just try 'whois -h whois.thur.de
> 210.139.255.223').

I don't understand the solution your proposing.  Are you suggesting that we
flood whois.thur.de with FreeBSD requests, or are you suggesting we have
every whois server in the world switch to this software?

> Why not keep whois(1) lean and put the "custom" stuff in a port?
> On the other hand, I fully understand that people might disagree :)

What's the point of software in the base system, if it doesn't do anything
useful?  If you want to find out who owns an IP block, you want to type
'whois (dotted-quad)' without having to know which country it was assigned
to.  Similarly, if you want to know who owns a .com, you're not going to be
required to know which registrar they chose.  whois(1) is an information
gathering tool, after all.


Best regards,
Mike Barcroft


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