[97271] in North American Network Operators' Group
Whois and the DoD
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Hank Nussbacher)
Tue Jun 5 12:58:19 2007
Date: Tue, 05 Jun 2007 19:56:07 +0300
To: nanog@merit.edu
From: Hank Nussbacher <hank@efes.iucc.ac.il>
Errors-To: owner-nanog@merit.edu
We are all familiar with whois.ripe.net and whois.arin.net and the other
whois services of the other RIRs. It allows us to know who has been
assigned the IP address in question and if needed, it gives us an initial
pointer in how to contact the "IP leaser" in case some network problem has
arisen that would involve them.
Unfortunately, the whois server for the DoD - whois.nic.mil no longer
exists and therefore large chunks of active IP address space are
unknown. For example:
138.138.0.0/16
158.0.0.0/13
[I am sure others can make an exhaustive list]. http://www.nic.mil/ used
to have an online whois service which is also no longer accessible.
I have contacted the RIRs and they admit there is a problem here that they
can't solve.
Based on http://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv4-address-space I would assume
IANA might be interested in mandating that any organization having IP space
from them must operate an accessible whois server.
So is there anyone out in NANOG-land that has a solution?
Thanks,
Hank
