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Registry Operators

Registry operators are the organizations that maintain the master database of all domain names registered under a particular generic top-level domain (gTLD).

Resources for RDAP Implementers

On 27 February 2019, the ICANN org issued a notification to gTLD registries and registrars of the requirement to implement an RDAP service by 26 August 2019, including a recommendation that implementation occur according to the February-2019 gTLD RDAP Profile.

RDAP enables users to access current registration data and was created as the replacement for the WHOIS protocol. RDAP was developed by the technical community in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). RDAP runs on top of HTTP(S); the protocol on which the web runs.

The RDAP standard is described in IETF STD 95, and 8056, available here.

The RDAP RFCs describe how certain sets of functionalities work, but do not define which should be included in a given implementation. The RFCs leave those defining decisions to implementers or to those that set requirements on implementers. In the gTLD space, there are contractual and policy requirements that registries and registrars have to abide by. One or more documents are needed in order to map those contractual and policy requirements, as well as define which functionalities from the RDAP RFCs should be included. These documents collectively are called the gTLD RDAP profile.

The Guide to the Registration Data Access Protocol * provides useful information to implementers regarding various aspects of RDAP and associated technologies. This guide also includes a list of RDAP client and server implementations.

ICANN's RDAP Conformance Tool

On February 2022, the ICANN organization published the RDAP conformance tool as a stand-alone, open source tool that can be used to verify if an RDAP server implementation is conformant with the RDAP standards developed by the IETF and optionally, the gTLD RDAP profile.

ICANN's RDAP Command Line Tools

ICANN makes available RDAP command-line interface clients that may be used to test RDAP servers. These tools provide a quick means for RDAP developers to view the information in their servers, and a testing tool that can be easily incorporated into Continue Delivery / Continuous Deployment pipelines. This tool is hosted on GitHub.

RDAP.ORG's Validator

Rdap.Org has an on-line validator for RDAP that can be found at http://validator.rdap.org *. While not as complete as the ICANN RDAP Conformance Tool, the Rdap.Org validator has a visual mode that can be helpful to pinpoint problems in some cases.

(*Please note that inclusion of the above links does not imply ICANN's endorsement nor any guarantee of compliance with applicable requirements. Implementers should do their own research and contact the external sites for answers to questions regarding their content.)

RDAP for gTLD Registries and Registrars Webinar 11 April 2019

Contact Global Support with questions related to RDAP.