whois by Marco d'Itri

Pass a domain or Internet-resource object and the client tries to select the appropriate Whois server. You can choose the server and port explicitly, control referral recursion, or request an IANA referral first. That last mode sends the complete query to IANA. Object-type and specificity options are useful for RIPE-like servers, but the manual warns that those flags can be ignored by other servers. Results are the responding registry’s published objects, with server-specific encoding and disclosure. Keep the chosen server and client version with a report; Debian’s archive is the project’s canonical release source.