Whois for Mac

$ whois example.com

What it’s for

Whois asks the public registries who a domain or an IP address belongs to. For a domain that means its registrar, its dates and its name servers. For an address, the network it belongs to and the contact for reporting abuse.

Use it when

• You want to know when a domain expires, or which registrar holds it.
• An address keeps showing up in your logs and you want to know whose it is.
• You need the abuse contact for a network.

Reading the result

Enter a domain, an IP address or an AS number and click Lookup. Netutilus first asks IANA, the registry of registries, which one holds the answer, then asks that registry.

For a domain:

• Registrar is the company it was registered through.
• Created, Updated and Expires are its registration dates.
• Status lists codes such as clientTransferProhibited, which locks the domain against an unwanted transfer.
• Name Servers answer DNS for the domain.

For an address or AS number, the Network section shows its Owner, address Range and CIDR, Net name, Country, origin AS, and Abuse contact.

The full reply is shown below, as the registry sent it.

What you might see

• “Redacted for privacy” in place of a name or email. Most registries hide private owners’ details now. The registrar’s contact still works.
• The whois server did not respond. Some registries are slow or limit requests. Try again later.
• Fewer fields for some country domains. Their registries publish less, and some only in their own format. The full reply below still has everything they sent.

Options worth knowing

• Lookups go straight to the registries’ whois servers. The query you type is the only thing sent.

Related

• DNS Lookup, for what a domain’s DNS says right now.
• GeoIP, for where an address is.
• IP addresses and Subnets.