A new type of referral

15 Nov 1999

      Dear colleagues,

 We will be implementing a new type of referral, to be used
to forward the querying client's IP address to the referred
whois server along with the query. Until now, there was no
way to let the referred whois server know the IP address
of the actual whois client, rendering the usage of an ACL
impossible without blocking all referred queries, on the side
of the referred whois server.

Briefly,

  o A fourth kind of referral will be defined, CLIENTADDRESS (The other
three were RIPE, INTERNIC and SIMPLE).
  o The IP address of the client will be sent to the referred whois
server, if the referral type is CLIENTADDRESS.
  o The IP address will be sent using the -V flag. The version and the IP
address will be separated by a comma (eg,  -Vripe2.3.1,193.140.45.45).
  o No other flag will be forwarded to the referred whois server.
  o When the server gets such a request, it will check the IP number of
the server which does the referral against a list of authorized whois
servers. If it is not in the list, it will be rejected.
  o Then, the IP address of the client will be extracted from the -V flag 
string and it will be regarded as if it is the IP address of a directly
querying whois client (ie, it is checked against the list of
DENYWHOISACESS list).

  Please let us know about your ideas and comments regarding this issue,

Regards,

Engin Gunduz
RIPE NCC
DB Group