Whois Search

When we want to check if an IP address 213.121.208.57 belongs to which ISP or owner, we will try whois search of one of the Network Information Centers (NIC). There are five NICs in this world handling the global IP address allocation, namely APNIC for Asia Pacific Region, ARIN (America Registry for Internet Number) for USA and Canada, RIPE for Europe, LACNIC for Latin America NIC and finally AFRINIC for African region. The IP address 213.121.208.57 belongs to a UK company, and if we try to use whois search in APNIC page, it will say hey this is not handled by me, goto RIPE. We will then goto RIPE and re-enter IP address in whois search box again and then get the registration information. This is quite inconvenient as we may need to access two NICs in order to find the registration.

At present, there is no one single NIC that stores up all the IP address allocation/registration of the whole world. Recently, I notice a site http://www.whois.sc which perform a single search for all IP address registration. I think this site will try a NIC at random, say APNIC, if APNIC says the IP should be interrogated at RIPE, it will goto there. This seems to be a great help to those who need to find IP address registration frequently.