Kitanas Schloß

Introduction

very internet protocol address belongs to an organization (e.g. an internet service provider). Which IP belongs to which organization is stored in a huge database. This database also holds many other interesting information about a specific IP address.

There are four authoritative whois servers:
- whois.arin.net ("North America and Sub-Sahara Africa")
- whois.ripe.net ("Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia, and African countries located north of the equator")
- whois.lacnic.net ("Latin America and some Caribbean Islands")
- whois.apnic.net ("Asia/Pacific Region")

ll these server have the same query format but may differ in their ouput format. To query information about a specific IP open a TCP connection on port 43 to the whois server and send the IP address in text format ("aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd") followed by a DOS line break. Then read the server's reply.

f the server cannot resolve the query it may return an error document or a default database entry. ARIN knows all IP addresses but will return a reference to one of the other whois servers if the IP address does not belong to its region.

Whois query

ince most operation systems ship with their own whois tool this program is just an example how to query a whois server. But when rewriting it for automatic usage it can be very useful for server applications that have to resolve IP addresses, e.g. to map an IP to a country or organization.

'Author     : Daniel, Master Sourcerer at Kitana's Cas...
'Last change: March 11, 2004
'Email      : sourcerer@kitana.org


#DIM ALL

$whoishost = "whois.arin.net"
%whoisport = 43
$outputfile = "whois.txt"


'Reads a document from an open connection
FUNCTION READTCP$(H&)
  LOCAL BUFFER$,DOC$

  DOC$=""
  DO
    TCP RECV H&,1024,BUFFER$
    DOC$=DOC$+BUFFER$
  LOOP UNTIL BUFFER$=""

  READTCP$=DOC$
END FUNCTION



'Main program
FUNCTION PBMAIN&
  LOCAL HTCP&,Q$,R$
  LOCAL P&,I&,NR&