InterNIC Directory and Database Services
Directory Services
We provide several methods of free access to X.500, WHOIS and Netfind white
pages data on the Internet.
X.500 Public access Directory User Agent (DUA):
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You can use an X.500 Directory User Agent by telnet to ds.internic.net - use
userid "x500" with no password - and obtain information about persons and
organizations participating in the X.500 pilot projects. The interface
provides on-line help and asks for a person's name, the department or unit
name, the organization or institution name, and the country name and then
responds to the query.
Electronic Mail:
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You can send person and institution queries to a mail server that in turn
queries the X.500 Directory and returns a response. Send mail to
mailserv@ds.internic.net. For instructions on how to use the mailserver,
send a message which includes the word "help" in the body of the message.
For a person query, the body of the message must have the keyword "person"
and a list of parameters in the format:
person <name, organization, country>
For an institution query, the body of the message must have the keyword
"institution" and a list of parameters in the format:
institution <name, country>
Directory System Agent (DSA):
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We run a QUIPU DSA named "Pied Tamarin" on the machine ds.internic.net that
has the following presentation address:
'0101'H/TELEX+00728722+RFC-1006+03+198.49.45.10+17003
Any DUA can connect to our DSA. We also run the Directory Assistant (DA)
and Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) access protocols.
The DSA "Pied Tamarin" presently stores entries of organizations that are
listing through the InterNIC and InterNIC personnel listings. It will
soon have WHOIS data collected by the Registration Services provider.
InterNIC Directory and Database Services will list a maximum of 50 entries
for each interested organization in the X.500 Directory that we maintain. An
electronic order form for entries in the X.500 Directory is available via
anonymous FTP. To get the order template, FTP to ds.internic.net and issue
the following commands.
cd internic.info
get x500.org.request
We will also help organizations create their own X.500 directories and link
them into the existing Internet Directory Tree.
Public Access Netfind Client:
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You can use our public access Netfind client by telnet to ds.internic.net -
use userid "netfind" with no password to get information about an individual.
The format of a search request is:
name keywords
where name is the last name of the individual and keywords are a list of
words that specify the domain name.
WHOIS
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WHOIS server, developed by AT&T, is available which provides a unified access
point to the three official Internet WHOIS servers for person and organization
queries. The server, which accepts queries on the standard WHOIS port,
searches the InterNIC Directory and DB Services (DS) server for non-MIL domain
and non-Point-Of-Contact (nonPOC) data, the DISA NIC server for MIL domain data
and the InterNIC Registration Services (RS) server for POC data. The results
from all three searches are returned to the user.
The DS WHOIS server is accessed via the "whois" command using the
"-h <host name>" option as follows:
whois -h ds.internic.net ".smith, john"
For detailed information regarding the query syntax, as well as general server
information, use the following command:
whois -h ds.internic.net help
If you have any further questions or need help, please contact the Directory
and Database Administrator at 1-800-862-0677 or 1-908-668-6587, or send
electronic mail to admin@ds.internic.net.
