ARIN deployed a series of enhancements to its Whois-RWS service today. This includes enabling CIDR support and IPv6 lookups in the search box on the web page, provided plain text rendering of lists of ASNs and networks on the web—plus enhanced CIDR query matching on WHOIS port 43.

Enhancement #1: Search by CIDR matching

CIDR matching capability is enhanced on the search box for the web page, allowing you to search for a network address using prefix/length notation. Note that it will default to the less specific search result set that is described in the port 43 enhancements below.

Enhancement #2: Search by IP addresses, organizations, ASNs

The next enhancement is a change to the default output on a query initiated by the search box on the web page for IP addresses, organizations, and ASNs. The query for an IP address or network will return the network as well as the full output of related Organization and Point of Contact (POC) data for the network. Likewise, the query result for an AS number will output the associated organization and related POCs along with the AS number. The query result for an organization, will list all related networks and ASNs, and give full output of associated POCs. This will allow you to view all information on a single web page. This “pft” option is an enhancement to the RESTful web interface, and it is not available on port 43. To use it, append “/pft” to the URL, for example:

- http://whois.arin.net/rest/org/ARIN/pft
- http://whois.arin.net/rest/net/ NET-192-136-136-0-1/pft

Note also that web search forms will default to using the “pft” option.

In addition, the NICNAME/WHOIS port 43 service now supports more than exact match CIDR.

Feel free to read more—including full details on the Whois-RWS service at https://www.arin.net/resources/whoisrws/index.html.

Culled from ARIN’s Announcement Archives.