hmm, is the gopher community aware of Matt Power's whois server list?
Matt keeps it up to date, if you know of any servers not on his list,
please tell him about them.
Here's a current copy of his file; it would be a simple matter to convert it
to the format gopher wants it in.
- Dan K.

sipb.mit.edu:/pub/whois/whois-servers.list

List of Internet whois servers, 1 July 1992 (Version 1.19)

This list was collected and compiled by Matt Power of M.I.T.

Questions or comments about this list should be sent to the address:

    mhpower@athena.mit.edu


Preferred server name       Associated institution
---------------------------------------------------------------------
bull.com                    Bull HN Information Systems
camb.com                    Cambridge Computer Associates
gte.com                     GTE Laboratories
intercon.com                InterCon Systems Corporation
relay.prime.com             Prime Computer
wp.psi.com                  Performance Systems International
sri.com                     SRI International
whois.sunquest.com          Sunquest Information Systems

mailhost.berkeley.edu       University of California at Berkeley
caltech.edu                 California Institute of Technology
horton.caltech.edu          California Institute of Technology
csufres.csufresno.edu       California State University - Fresno
csuhayward.edu              California State University - Hayward
csus.edu                    California State University - Sacramento
cc.fsu.edu                  Florida State University
gettysburg.edu              Gettysburg College
gmu.edu                     George Mason University
whois.harvard.edu           Harvard University
indiana.edu                 Indiana University
isi.edu                     USC Information Sciences Institute
jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu          Johns Hopkins University
merit.edu                   Merit Computer Network
whois.rsmas.miami.edu       University of Miami, Rosentiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences
mit.edu                     Massachusetts Institute of Technology
whois.msstate.edu           Mississippi State University
nau.edu                     Northern Arizona University
whois.ncsu.edu              North Carolina State University
nd.edu                      University of Notre Dame
earth.njit.edu              New Jersey Institute of Technology
acfcluster.nyu.edu          New York University, Courant Institute
wp.nyu.edu                  New York University
austin.onu.edu              Ohio Northern University
orst.edu                    Oregon State University
osu.edu                     Ohio State University
wp.pdx.edu                  Portland State University
whois.cc.rochester.edu      University of Rochester
whitepages.rutgers.edu      Rutgers University
sdsu.edu                    San Diego State University
sonoma.edu                  Sonoma State University
stanford.edu                Stanford University
sunysb.edu                  State University of New York, Stony Brook
syr.edu                     Syracuse University
whois.bcm.tmc.edu           Baylor College of Medicine
uc.edu                      University of Cincinnati
directory.ucdavis.edu       University of California at Davis
uchicago.edu                University of Chicago
oac.ucla.edu                University of California at Los Angeles
ucsd.edu                    University of California at San Diego
whois.eng.ufl.edu           University of Florida
whois.uh.edu                University of Houston
umd5.umd.edu                University of Maryland
umn.edu                     University of Minnesota
unl.edu                     University of Nebraska at Lincoln
oregon.uoregon.edu          University of Oregon
whois.uoregon.edu           University of Oregon
whois.upenn.edu             University of Pennsylvania
whois.virginia.edu          University of Virginia
wisc.edu                    University of Wisconsin
wpi.wpi.edu                 Worcester Polytechnic Institute

wp.lbl.gov                  Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory
llnl.gov                    Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
orion.arc.nasa.gov          NASA Ames Research Center
wp.nersc.gov                National Energy Research Supercomputer Center

nic.ddn.mil                 DDN Network Information Center
whois.nrl.navy.mil          Naval Research Laboratory

ncnoc.concert.net           MCNC - Center for Communications
nis.easi.net                EASInet Operations Center
wp.es.net                   Energy Sciences Network
njin.net                    New Jersey Intercampus Network
whois.ripe.net              Reseaux IP Europeens

whois.wu-wien.ac.at         Wirtschaftsuniversitaet Wien
wp.adelaide.edu.au          University of Adelaide
uwa.edu.au                  University of Western Australia
whois.usask.ca              University of Saskatchewan
whohost.uwo.ca              University of Western Ontario
dfnnoc.gmd.de               Gesellschaft fuer Mathematik und Datenverarbeitung
dkuug.dk                    Dansk UNIX-system Bruger Gruppe
cs.hut.fi                   Helsinki University of Technology
tut.fi                      Tampere University of Technology
inria.inria.fr              Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et Automatique
whois.univ-lyon1.fr         Universite Claude Bernard Lyon I
sangam.ernet.in             National Centre for Software Technology
isgate.is                   Association of Research Networks in Iceland
cantsc.canterbury.ac.nz     University of Canterbury
vuw.ac.nz                   Victoria University, Wellington
waikato.ac.nz               Waikato University
chalmers.se                 Chalmers University of Technology
sics.se                     Swedish Institute of Computer Science
whois.sunet.se              SUNET (Swedish University Network)
doc.ic.ac.uk                Imperial College

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Documentation", and other comments...


Redistribution
--------------
If you redistribute this list, or excerpt a significant number of
entries from it, be sure to also pass along the original anonymous-FTP
location, and request that updates be sent to my e-mail address, as
specified at the top of this file. This will allow users to obtain
updated versions at a later time, and will help ensure that I get the
information I need to do the updating.

Also, keep in mind that accessing a whois server requires a direct
connection to the Internet. In general, sites that have access to the
Internet via tcp/whois will also have access to the Internet via
tcp/ftp, and will thus be able to obtain this file directly. Making
the file available via a mail-based server is therefore largely
unnecessary.


Updates
-------
I am interested in any corrections to the above listing, and in
reports of other whois servers. Please send them via e-mail to the
address listed at the top of this file. Unless the maintainer of the
server has already announced his whois service publicly, I will
attempt to contact the postmaster or system maintainer prior to
including a new entry.


Scope
-----
Whois servers, at least by my definition, provide directory
information in response to TCP queries on port 43, in a manner roughly
analogous to the DDN NIC whois service described in RFC 954. I realize
that many sites instead provide this directory service via the finger
protocol, or accept queries by mail for directory information.
Although I'd be happy to receive reports of these, the scope of this
particular listing is limited to the TCP whois service.

There are a few hosts that accept tcp/whois connections, but respond
with information identical to that given by a standard finger server.
Since I don't consider this a directory service, I have been omitting
these hosts.


Unlisted servers
----------------
I know of a few other whois servers that aren't listed above, even
though they allow access to at least a small amount of directory
information. The server maintainers either did not want a listing
here, at all, or required specific disclaimers that their service was
experimental or unsupported. Currently, this includes five in the
United States, one in Canada, and one in Germany.


Server names
------------ 
There are currently three popular naming conventions for whois
servers. The most common practice is to put whois service on a host
as far up as possible in the organization's domain hierarchy. For
example, the highest-level domain name associated with M.I.T. is
MIT.EDU, and M.I.T.'s whois service is operated on the host named
mit.edu.

Another common practice is to choose 'whois' or 'wp' as the first part
of the domain name ('wp' stands for "White Pages"). This would be the
case if M.I.T.'s whois service were on a host named whois.mit.edu or
wp.mit.edu. In these cases, the listed name is often an alias, not the
host's canonical name. In selecting the name to be listed, I've given
preference to aliases starting with whois or wp.

I personally prefer the first-mentioned convention, since it results
in shorter command lines, and ones I believe are less confusing to
beginning Internet users. In particular, the top-level host often
supports organization-wide mail service, and thus the same host name
can be used for whois queries and for e-mail.


Usage
-----
Currently, it is necessary to query whois servers directly. I do not
know of any central server that will determine relevant entries from
this entire list and distribute queries on your behalf (although, I
realize there are servers that can consult limited subsets of the
other servers). This is the main motivation for distributing the
complete server list to individual Internet users.

The procedure for accessing the whois servers will vary depending on
your host's operating system, and on what software is installed. On
UNIX systems, the preferred method is

    whois -h _server_name_ _name_of_person_

If there is no whois program, sometimes it will work to type

    telnet _server_name_ 43

and then type the "name of person" on a separate line. (The usefulness
of this will vary depending on the details of the telnet client
implementation installed on your system.)

Alternatively, you may be able to compile a whois program yourself,
starting from source code available at various anonymous FTP sites. As
a start, you might try searching archie for files named 'whois.tar.Z'.

Programs named 'whois' and 'telnet' may also be available on VMS
systems. Typing 'HELP WHOIS' or 'HELP TELNET' at the DCL prompt may be
useful.

Whois programs may also be installed on other operating systems, or
may be available for these systems via anonymous FTP. Searching archie
for file names matching 'whois' (case insensitive) might be worthwhile.

Also, system administrators interested in starting new whois servers
will probably be able to find one or more separate source-code
packages on anonymous FTP sites. In addition to checking archie, you
may wish to look in the file whois-servers.source, available at the
anonymous-FTP location listed at the top of this file.


Access Restrictions
-------------------
In general, these servers should only be used for isolated queries
about specific individuals of interest. Typically, it is not
acceptable to make an extended series of queries in an attempt to
obtain large sections, or the entirety, of the directory. Such a
strategy is objectionable both because of excessive consumption of
server resources, and because the directory itself is usually
considered proprietary. In particular, deriving lists of persons for
distribution of commercial advertisements or solicitations is
expressly prohibited by site policies in many cases, and could easily
cause sites to curtail the current open access to their whois servers.


Server problems
---------------
Not all of the whois-server entries constitute a "supported" service
within their respective domains.  Even at sites where the service is
supported, there may be occasional changes in the server host name.
Also, at any given time, you will probably find one or more of the
servers not operational, or apparently unusable. I have not
purposefully included any servers that I believe have been permanently
shut down. In all cases, either I have personally seen the server
provide useful information within the last few months, or else the
maintainers of the server have asked me to include it anyway, while
they work on resolving usage problems.


Collection
----------
The list was collected with some attention to minimizing consumption
of resources on other Internet hosts and networks. In particular, no
DNS zone transfers were used in identifying possible whois-server
hosts. In general, I attempted name resolution or tcp/whois
connections to only a few hosts in each second-level domain. Even in
cases where I was confident that a server existed somewhere in a
domain, no more than ten attempts were made. All queries originated
from hosts in the MIT.EDU domain. Also, I've been maintaining versions
of this list since August 1990, and since then a number of persons
have mailed me reports of whois servers at their sites, and (less
frequently) at other sites. In particular, Brendan Kehoe and John F.
Sandhoff recently provided a few entries that I otherwise probably
would have missed -- thanks!

