Generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) Registry Agreements

gTLD Registry Agreements establish the rights, duties, liabilities, and obligations ICANN requires of registry operators to run gTLDs.

TLD Sponsorship Agreement: Attachment 15 (.aero)

ICANN | TLD Sponsorship Agreement: Attachment 15 (.aero)

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TLD Sponsorship Agreement: Attachment 15 (.aero)
Posted: 17 December 2001


Public Whois Specification

The Sponsor will provide RFC954-conformant Whois service. This Attachment is subject to change by agreement of the Sponsor and ICANN during the design process as well as during the IETF standards process. However, the following provides the target architecture and initial functionality. In addition, Sponsor agrees to implement changes to this Attachment specified by ICANN to conform to IETF provreg working group's protocol specification no later than 135 days after the IETF specification is adopted as a Proposed Standard [RFC 2026, section 4.1.1].

RFC954-Conformant Whois

The standard Whois service is intended as a lookup service for registries, registrars, registrants, as well as for other individuals and businesses that wish to query details of domain names or nameservers stored in the registry. The standard Whois service will provide a central location for all authoritative .aero TLD data. The registry provides a front-end web interface to allow convenient user access to the Whois service.

The RFC954-conformant Whois service will be engineered to handle moderate transaction load and be integral to the standard suite of Registry Services. The Whois service will return a single response per domain name or nameserver query. The RFC954-conformant Whois service will conform to the requirements of Attachments 6 and 7.

The RFC954-conformant service provided by the registry will have the following features:

  • Standard protocol accessible over port 43.
  • Batch-style or near real time updates.
  • Additional fields capability.
  • Whois Service Data Elements

Whois Service Data Elements

The RFC954-conformant service will include the following data elements:

  • The name of the domain name registered;
  • The IP addresses of the primary nameserver and secondary nameserver(s) of the name registered, if applicable, i.e. nameserver has a .aero name.;
  • The corresponding names of those nameservers;
  • The identity of the sponsoring registrar;
  • The ENS_AuthId identifying the authorization of the registration, (this enables tracking of registrations performed using the same ENS_AuthId);
  • The original creation date and term of the registration;
  • The name, postal address, e-mail address, voice telephone number, and (where available) fax number of the domain name registrant;
  • The name, postal address, e-mail address, voice telephone number, and (where available) fax number of the technical contact for the name registered;
  • The name, postal address, e-mail address, voice telephone number, and (where available) fax number of the administrative contact for the name registered; and
  • The Maintainer URL (email or website). The maintainer is a person that has been designated by the Registrar for the registration of the domain (for example a reseller, could also depend on the registrant).

Minimum Data Update Frequency

The Registry Operator shall make reasonable efforts to update the data continuously as requests are processed, in a matter of seconds or minutes. The typical update cycle will be 30 seconds but may be different depending on performance considerations. The Registry Operator shall ensure that records in the Whois server are updated no later than 24 hours after the completion of the registration or modification transaction with the registrar.

Additional Fields Capability

If necessary, .aero may introduce after a 6 to 12 month period of operational stability some additional fields to the list of Whois fields. Those fields will be preceded and identified by appropriate tags.

Privacy Capability

The Sponsor may introduce the optional ability to associate privacy labels to a record in the Registry Database. These fields would appear in an "additional information" section of the Whois data. The maximum number of custom fields allowed per record is yet to be determined.

The privacy label capability allows certain data to be associated with an indication of any special disclosure or handling restrictions.

Query Control - Object Type Control

The following keywords restrict a search to specific object type:

Domain: Search only by domain objects. The input string is searched in the Name field.

Contact: Search only contact objects. The input string is searched in the ID field.

Nameserver: Search only by nameserver objects. The input string is searched in the nameserver field or the IP address field.

Registrar: Search only registrar objects. The input string is searched in the Name field.

By default, if no object type control is specified, then the Name field of the Domain object is searched.

Whois Output Fields

Domain Record:

A Whois query that results in domain information will return the following fields from the Domain object and the associated data from host and contact objects. This set of data is also referred to as the Domain Record.

Domain ID
Domain Name
Domain Status
Sponsoring Registrar (IANA-assigned identifier)
ENS_AuthID
Registrant, Administrative, Technical and Billing Contact Information including
   Contact ID
   Contact Name
   Contact Organization
   Contact Address, City, State/Province, Country
   Contact Postal Code
   Contact Phone, Fax, E-mail
Maintainer URL
Names of Nameservers associated with this domain
Created by Registrar (IANA-assigned identifier)
Last Updated by Registrar (IANA-assigned identifier)
Last Transferred Date
Additional fields (Sponsor specified, will be defined later, if required)
Domain Registration Date
Domain Expiration Date
Domain Last Updated Date



















Nameserver Record:

Nameserver ID
Nameserver name
Currently Associated (true/false)
Nameserver status
IP addresses associated (if applicable)
Created by Registrar (IANA-assigned identifier)
Sponsoring Registrar (IANA-assigned identifier)
Last Updated by Registrar (IANA-assigned identifier)
Created Date
Last Updated Date
Last Transferred Date
Additional fields (Sponsor specified, will be defined later, if required)










Contact Record:

A Whois query that results in contact information will return the following. This set of information is referred to as the Contact Record.

Contact ID
Contact Name
Contact Organization
Contact Address, City, State/Province, Country + 3 street fields
Contact Postal Code
Contact Phone, Fax, E-mail
Contact Registration Date
Contact Last Updated Date
Currently Associated
Contact Status
Additional fields (Sponsor specified)
Sponsoring Registrar (IANA-assigned identifier)
Created by Registrar (IANA-assigned identifier)
Last Transferred Date












Registrar Record:

A Whois query that results in registrar information will return the following. This set of information is referred to as the Registrar Record.

Registrar ID (conforming to the IANA registrar-ids registry)
Registrar Name
Registrar Status
Registrar Address, City, State/Province, Country
Registrar Postal Code
Registrar Phone, Fax, E-mail
Registrar Administrative Contacts
Registrar Technical Contacts
Registrar Billing Contacts







Sample Whois Output

This section provides sample output from the Whois server for each type of Registry Object: Domain, Contact, Nameserver, and Registrar. The output is structured as key/value pairs, which simplifies machine-readability. In the Input section, the quoted string represents the string actually passed to the server in the request packet.

Domain Record:

Input: whois "domain = sita.aero"
Output: Domain ID: AAA-0001
Domain Name: SITA.AERO
Sponsoring Registrar: REG-01
ENS_AuthId : AERO-123456789
Domain Status: ACTIVE
Registrant ID: PER-00001
Registrant Name: ANDREW CHARLTON
Registrant Organization: SITA, ICN
Registrant Address: 1234 MAIN STREET
Registrant City: GENEVA
Registrant State/Province: A
Registrant Country: SWITZERLAND
Registrant Postal Code: 1234
Registrant Phone Number: +41-22-747-6704
Registrant Facsimile Number: +41-22-747-6212
Registrant Email: CHARLTON@SITA.AERO
Admin ID: PER-00002
Admin Name: ANDREW CHARLTON
Admin Organization: SITA, INC.
Admin Address: 26 CHEMIN DA JOINVILLE
Admin City: GENEVA
Admin State/Province: A
Admin Country: SWITZERLAND
Admin Postal Code: 1234
Admin Phone Number: +41-22-747-6704
Admin Facsimile Number: +41-22-747-6212
Admin Email: CHARLTON@SITA.AERO
Tech ID: PER-00002
Tech Name: ANDREW CHARLTON
Tech Organization: SITA, INC
Tech Address: 26 CHEMIN DA JOINVILLE
Tech City: GENEVA
Tech State/Province: A
Tech Country: SWITZERLAND
Tech Postal Code: 1234
Tech Phone Number: +41-22-747-6704
Tech Facsimile Number: +41-22-747-6212
Tech Email: CHARLTON@SITA.AERO
Billing ID: PER-00002
Billing Name: ANDREW CHARLTON
Billing Organization: SITA, INC.
Billing Address: 26 CHEMIN DA JOINVILLE
Billing City: GENEVA
Billing State/Province: A
Billing Country: SWITZERLAND
Billing Postal Code: 1234
Billing Phone Number: +41-22-747-6704
Billing Facsimile Number: +41-22-747-6212
Billing Email: CHARLTON@SITA.AERO
Name Server: NIC.AERO.ORG
Name Server: WWW.ICOM.ORG
Maintainer: SPECIALCARE@RESELLER.COM
Created By: REG-02
Updated By: REG-01
Created On: 2002-01-02
Expires On: 2004-01-02
Updated On: 2002-03-02
Transferred On: 2002-03-02

























































Nameserver Record:

Input: whois "nameserver nic.sita.aero"
or
whois "nameserver 130.242.24.6"
Output: Nameserver ID: HST-1
Nameserver name: NIC.SITA.AERO
Currently Associated (true/false):T
Nameserver status: ACTIVE
IP addresses associated: 130.242.24.6
Sponsoring Registrar: REG-01
Created By: REG-02
Updated By: REG-01
Created On: 2002-01-02
Updated On: 2002-03-02
Transferred On: 2002-03-02
Additional fields (Sponsor specified, will be defined later, if required)













Contact Record:

Input: whois "contact = PER-00002"
Output: Contact ID: PER-00002
Name: ANDREW CHARLTON
Organization: SITA, INC
Address: 26 CHEMIN DA JOINVILLE
City: GENEVA
State: A
Country: SWITZERLAND
Postal Code: 1234
Phone Number: +41-22-747-6704
Facsimile Number +41-22-747-6212
E-mail: CHARLTON@SITA.AERO
Status: Active
Sponsoring Registrar: REG-01
Created By: REG-01
Created On: 2002-01-02
Updated On: 2002-01-02
Transferred On: 0000-00-00
















Registrar Record:

Input: whois "registrar SAMPLE"
Output: Registrar ID: REG-01
Registrar Name: SAMPLE
Registrar Status: ACTIVE
Registrar Address 1: 123 Some Street
Registrar Address 2:
Registrar City: Acity
Registrar State/Province: RE
Registrar Country: CC
Registrar Postal Code: 12345
Registrar Phone: +11-11-1111-1111
Registrar Fax: +22-22-2222-2222
Registrar E-mail: jdoe@sample.tld
Admin Contact ID: PER-00003
Tech Contact ID: PER-00004
Billing Contact Name: PER-00005
















Prior draft:

13 November 2001


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