Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!lll-winken!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!decwrl!ucbvax!NISC.SRI.COM!cwilson
From: cwilson@NISC.SRI.COM (Chan Wilson)
Newsgroups: news.newusers.questions
Subject: Re: Is there a net geographical index?
Message-ID: <13229@fs2.NISC.SRI.COM>
Date: 15 Feb 90 03:54:15 GMT
References: <798@dftsrv.gsfc.nasa.gov> <Feb.5.16.33.15.1990.10077@presto.IG.COM>
Reply-To: cwilson@NISC.SRI.COM (Chan Wilson)
Organization: Network Info Systems Ctr., SRI Intl., Menlo Park, CA.
Lines: 56

In article <Feb.5.16.33.15.1990.10077@presto.IG.COM> mcb@presto.IG.COM (Michael C. Berch) writes:
>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 <blurf>
>
>where <blurf> 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.

...which happens to be down at the moment. :(  However, DEC came out and
replaced the bad drive, so it should be up by Thursday (2/15) morning.

[...]

>	To single out one record, look it up with "!xxx", where xxx is the
>	handle, shown in parenthesis following the name, which comes first.

You can also ask for help; it's fairly comprehensive.

Another interesting utility is 'nslookup', if your system has it.  It will
give you the I-net number for the given host...

% nslookup apple.com

Server:  NISC.SRI.COM
Address:  192.33.33.51

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:    apple.com
Address:  130.43.2.2

%

>Michael C. Berch  
>mcb@presto.ig.com / uunet!presto.ig.com!mcb / ames!bionet!mcb

--Chan
			   ................
  Chan Wilson -- cwilson@nisc.sri.com <or> radius!cwilson@apple.com
Janitor/Architect of comp.binaries.apple2 archive on wuarchive.wustl.edu
	      I don't speak for SRI, someone else does.
			   ................