Whois

1 definition found

From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03) [foldoc]:

  whois
       
          An {Internet} directory service for looking up names of people
          on a remote server.  Many servers respond to {TCP} queries on
          {port} 43, in a manner roughly analogous to the {DDN} {NIC}
          whois service described in {RFC} 954.  Other sites provide


          this directory service via the {finger} {protocol} or accept
          queries by {electronic mail} for directory information.  On
          {Unix} the client command is
       
          	whois -h server_name person_name
       
          You can also type "telnet server_name 43" and then type the
          person's name on a separate line.  For a list of whois
          servers, FTP/Gopher: sipb.mit.edu.  Or
       
          	whois -h sipb.mit.edu whois-servers
       
          As the above command demonstrates, whois can find information
          about things other than users, e.g. domains, networks and
          hosts.
       
          See also {finger}, {X.500}, {white pages}.