Unsponsored TLD Agreement: Appendix O (.pro)

Unsponsored TLD Agreement: Appendix O (.pro)

Posted: 26 August 2003

1. Introduction

RegistryPro will operate and maintain a centralized, authoritative near real-time Whois system, as set forth below in this Appendix O. This new service will simplify search requests, and make responses to Whois queries more consistent, reliable, and effective.

2. Registrar Requirements

The RegistryPro Whois service will contain data transferred by RegistryPro Registrars ("Registrars") (defined in Appendix J) during the registration process. If a registrant changes any registration information that is part of the registrant's Whois information, the Registrar must communicate such changes to RegistryPro as soon as such Registrar receives such information. This will ensure a centralized source of up-to-date information for every .pro domain name, under a standard protocol with a consistent format. The information contained in the RegistryPro Whois database is authoritative.

3. Whois Data

RegistryPro will operate and maintain a registry-level Whois service that contains a complete set of information for each .pro domain name (including both second-level domains, which are operated by RegistryPro, and third-level domains, which are available for registration through Registrars), including:

• Domain name
• The identity of the Registrar
• Type of registration (domain registration or defensive registration)
• The beginning and expiration dates of the registration
• Registrant contact information
• Technical and administrative contact information
• The names of any nameservers associated with the domain
• The IP address(es) of those nameservers
• Right-to-use information (registration requirements, see Appendix L)
• Trademark data (see Appendix J)

The IP addresses need not be returned in response to queries other than queries about nameserver objects.

4. Protocol

4.1 Introduction

RegistryPro's Whois service will update in near real-time, with updates generally appearing on the Whois system in conformance with Appendices D and E. The Whois service is designed to be extremely robust and scalable, and contains mechanisms to detect and prevent abusive usage.

RegistryPro's Whois service is made available through the port 43-Whois protocol and through a web-based interface. The Whois protocol is defined in RFC 954 and RegistryPro will ensure that its Whois server operates according to the protocol defined therein. The web-based Whois service is described in Section 4.5 below.

4.2 Whois (Port 43) Protocol

RegistryPro's port 43-Whois service operates in conformity with RFC 954 (with the exception that the Whois server is RegistryPro's, not SRI-NIC's):

To access the NICNAME/WHOIS server:

Connect to the RegistryPRO service host at TCP service port 43 (decimal).

Send a single "command line", ending with <CRLF> (ASCII CR and LF).

Receive information in response to the command line. The server closes its connection as soon as the output is finished.

4.3 Query Syntax

The command line transmitted by the client must be in the following format:

[type =] query

In the syntax above, arguments indicated in italics are keywords that must be replaced by particular values as described below. Portions of the syntax contained within [square brackets] are optional.

The following type keywords are used to indicate that the query applies to a specific object type:

If the optional type keyword is not provided, the default behavior is to search only domain objects as if the "Domain" keyword had been specified.

The query provided must be an exact match for the Name (fully qualified), ID, or IP address field of the object being searched for (as specified above). The query is considered to be case insensitive. All queries will return at most a single result, except nameserver queries based on IP address, which may return multiple results.

The server will return two varieties of responses: errors, and successful query results. All lines in an error result will be preceded by the string "%%". The rest of the line will contain freeform text describing the error condition. Each line will be terminated by <CRLF>. The number of lines and length of each line is variable.

An example of an error result is below:

%% No match.

The other type of response is a successful query result. Three types of lines may be contained within a query result: comment lines, blank lines, and data lines. The first character in a comment line is the character "#". These lines contain information that is not intended to be parsed by machines and may contain statements of registry policy, status information regarding the Whois service, or other freeform messages. These lines should always be displayed by Whois client software. Blank lines contain no data or only white space and are presented only for visual formatting purposes; they should also be ignored by parsers. Data lines are formatted in key/value pairs to facilitate machine readability. The format of data lines is the key, followed by the character ":", followed by a space, followed by the data. All lines are terminated by <CRLF>.

4.4 Responses

4.4.1 Domain Queries

The following lines may be present in the response to a query for a domain object:

Domain ID
Domain Name
Registration Type
Sponsoring Registrar
Registrar URL
Registrant ID
Registrant Name
Registrant Organization (2)
Registrant Address (1)
Registrant City
Registrant State/Province
Registrant Country
Registrant Postal Code
Registrant Phone Number
Registrant Fax Number(2)
Registrant Email
Trademark Name (2)
Trademark Date (2)
Trademark Country (2)
Trademark Number (2)
Admin ID
Admin Name
Admin Organization (2)
Admin Address (1)
Admin City
Admin State/Province
Admin Country
Admin Postal Code
Admin Phone Number
Admin Fax Number (2)
Admin Email
Tech ID
Tech Name
Tech Organization (2)
Tech Address (1)
Tech City
Tech State/Province
Tech Country
Tech Postal Code
Tech Phone Number
Tech Fax Number (2)
Tech Email
Nameserver (1)
Created Date
Expiration Date
Updated Date

Notes:

• Sponsoring registrars will be identified in all Whois output by the identifier assigned for the registrar at http://www.iana.org/assignments/registrar-ids.
• Premium defensive registrations will be displayed with a Domain Name of the format "example.*.pro".
• Fields marked with (1) above may appear more than once. Fields marked with (2) are optional and may not appear.

Sample input and output for a successful query is provided below:

4.4.2 Contact Queries

The following lines may be present in the response to a query for a contact object:

Contact ID
Sponsoring Registrar
Registrar URL
Name
Organization (2)
Address (1)
City
State/Province
Country
Postal Code
Phone Number
Fax Number(2)
Email
Professional Accreditation (1) (2)
Created Date
Updated Date

Note: Sponsoring registrars will be identified in all Whois output by the identifier assigned for the registrar at http://www.iana.org/assignments/registrar-ids.

Fields marked with (1) above may appear more than once. Fields marked with (2) are optional and may not appear.

Sample input and output for a successful query is provided below:

4.4.3 Nameserver Queries

The following lines may be present in the response to a query for a nameserver object:

Nameserver ID
Registrar ID
Registrar URL
Server Name
IP address (1)
Created Date
Updated Date

Note: Sponsoring registrars will be identified in all Whois output by the identifier assigned for the registrar at http://www.iana.org/assignments/registrar-ids.

Fields marked with (1) are optional and may not appear.

Sample input and output for a successful query is provided below:

4.4.4 Registrar Queries

The following lines may be present in the response to a query for a Registrar object:

Registrar ID
Registrar URL
Address (1)
City
State/Province
Country
Postal Code
Phone Number
Fax Number
Email
Created Date
Updated Date

Note: Sponsoring registrars will be identified in all Whois output by the identifier assigned for the registrar at http://www.iana.org/assignments/registrar-ids.

Fields marked with (1) above may appear more than once.

Sample input and output for a successful query is provided below:

4.5 Web-Based Interface

RegistryPro provides its own front-end web interface to allow convenient user access to the Whois service. The query syntax and responses are as described in Sections 4.2 and 4.3 above.

5. Miscellaneous

5.1 Reservations

The RegistryPro Whois system has been designed to be robust, available and perform to high standards. (See Appendices C, D, and E.) While the general policy is not to restrict Whois queries, RegistryPro reserves the right, with authorization of ICANN, to activate countermeasures to limit or eliminate abusive usage.
RegistryPro reserves the right to develop and deploy these services internally, or outsource management of these facilities to a third party contractor under terms that are commercially reasonable and consistent with the functional standards.

5.2 Disclaimer of Warranties

EXCEPT AS PROVIDED BY WRITTEN AGREEMENT, REGISTRY OPERATOR DOES NOT MAKE ANY WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, WITH RESPECT TO THE SERVICES RENDERED BY ITSELF, ITS SERVANTS, ITS AGENTS, OR ANY REGISTRAR OR THE RESULTS OBTAINED FROM THEIR WORK, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, ANY IMPLIED WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY, NONINFRINGEMENT, OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Earlier drafts:

6 May 2001

Page Updated 26-Aug-2003

©2001  The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. All rights reserved.