Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!bionet!ig!mcb From: mcb@presto.IG.COM (Michael C. Berch) Newsgroups: news.newusers.questions Subject: Re: Is there a net geographical index? Summary: The "whois" database Message-ID: Date: 6 Feb 90 00:33:17 GMT References: <798@dftsrv.gsfc.nasa.gov> Organization: IntelliGenetics, Inc., Mountain View, Calif. USA Lines: 52 In the referenced article, packer@chrpserv.gsfc.nasa.gov (Charles Packer) writes: > Is there an index somewhere that identifies the geographical > location and organization of each Usenet site sorted by > net address? For example, for my site I would look up > "gsfc.nasa.gov" and find Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, > Maryland, USA. If you are on the Internet, you have access to the "whois" database maintained by the DDN Network Information Center on the system nic.ddn.mil. There are two ways to access it: if your system supports the "whois" command (BSD and SunOS, at least), just type % whois where can be a host name, domain name, personal name, mailbox name, or whatever. If you don't have this, telnet to nic.ddn.mil, and at the TOP-20 prompt (you don't have to log in) type "whois" and you'll get the same information. For some reason gsfc.nasa.gov isn't indexed in this database (3rd level domains often aren't), but here's the info for (example) the host dftsrv.gsfc.nasa.gov: % whois dftsrv.gsfc.nasa.gov Nasa Goddard Space Flight Center (DFTSRV) Hostname: DFTSRV.GSFC.NASA.GOV Address: 128.183.10.134 System: SUN/3 running ? Coordinator: Jha, Ashok (AJ29) jha@DFTNIC.GSFC.NASA.GOV (301) 286-9423 domain server Record last updated on 22-Jun-89. There is one registered user: Corsetti, Tom (TC112) tomc@DFTSRV.GSFC.NASA.GOV (301) 286-2188 To single out one record, look it up with "!xxx", where xxx is the handle, shown in parenthesis following the name, which comes first. -- Michael C. Berch mcb@presto.ig.com / uunet!presto.ig.com!mcb / ames!bionet!mcb