A public service, since 1998.
The Prefix WhoIs Project provides a whois-compatible client and server framework for disclosing up-to-date routing information. Instead of registrar-originated network data — often unspecific or inaccurate — it uses the Internet's global routing table as gleaned from routing peers around the world.
A network of public servers
The project operates a global network of public servers running a derivative of our Prefix WhoIs server software. One hundred percent of the network resources behind it — servers, transit, DNS and load balancing — have been donated by public and private organisations. Many of our servers are operated by large Internet service providers who thought the service should exist.
Query number limitations exist only to distribute resources for the public good, and to curb commercial use and harvesting of the system. Higher query limits for education, research and government are customarily granted free upon reasonable request, and the software is open source so anyone can run the same view from their own routers.
Thanks and acknowledgements
- Our sponsors, for their donations
- Our pWhoIs mirror sites around the globe
- Team Cymru, for their contributions — including the idea of the first prefix-based whois server
- Anyone who operates a looking glass or route-views server
Every answer says where it came from. Cache-Date is when the answering server last refreshed its table. AS-Path is the path as seen from that server's peers — a real observation, not a global truth. Prefix data comes from live BGP sessions and route-views digests; names and geography from registry imports. Query version on port 43 at any time to see the node's cache time, prefix and peer counts.
One server, one transit donation, answers for everyone.
The service answers a very large query load from a small pool of donated servers. Each node runs the open-source pWhoIs server, pulls the routing table from a router or route-views feed, and is load-balanced in behind whois.pwhois.org.
We need modest, modern hardware — a few gigabytes of RAM for the in-memory tree plus PostgreSQL — a static address, and transit you do not mind sharing. In return: your organization listed as a contributor, and a route view of the Internet from your own edge.
Interested in contributing?
Hardware, transit, mirrors, code, documentation, or a correction — write to us and we will send the specifics.