whois.1 (2010 09)

whois(1) whois(1)

NAME

whois - Internet user name directory service

SYNOPSIS

whois [-h hostname ] name

DESCRIPTION

whois looks up records in the Network Information Center database.

The operands speciﬁed to whois are concatenated together (separated by white-space) and presented to

the whois server.

The default action, unless directed otherwise with a special name, is to do a very broad search, looking

for matches to name in all types of records and most ﬁelds (name, nicknames, hostname, net address,

etc.) in the database. For more information as to what name operands have special meaning, and how to

guide the search, use the special name ‘‘help’’.

Options

whois supports the following option:

-h use the speciﬁed host instead of the default NIC.

EXAMPLES

Look up user John Doe

whois Doe,John

DEPENDENCIES

The machine making the

whois enquiry must be able to route the request over the network to the

speciﬁed host, or to the default NIC.

AUTHOR

whois was developed by the University of California, Berkeley.