ipwhois is a library for retrieving and parsing registration information associated with IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. It supports both the Registration Data Access Protocol (RDAP) and traditional WHOIS queries, converting responses into structured data suitable for further processing.
The software is particularly useful for network administration, security investigations and applications that need to identify the organizations responsible for internet address ranges. It can retrieve network allocation details, registration contacts, autonomous system information and related records from regional and national internet registries.
RDAP is generally preferable to traditional WHOIS because it returns structured responses rather than registry-specific text. However, ipwhois supports both approaches, allowing applications to work with different registry services and existing lookup workflows.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Retrieves registration information for IPv4 and IPv6 addresses.
- Supports RDAP queries with structured JSON responses.
- Parses legacy WHOIS records into standardized dictionaries.
- Supports referral WHOIS queries for additional registration information.
- Provides recursive parsing of parent and child network allocations.
- Retrieves IP-to-ASN information and autonomous system origin records.
- Supports national internet registry queries for JPNIC and KRNIC.
- Handles proxy connections for RDAP requests.
- Provides configurable connection timeouts.
- Includes human-readable translations of registration data fields.
- Offers utilities for working with IP addresses and network information.
- Supports experimental bulk lookup operations.
- Provides a command-line interface with optional ANSI colour output.
Website: github.com/secynic/ipwhois
Support:
Developer: Philip Hane
License: BSD 2-Clause ‘Simplified’ License
ipwhois is written in Python. Learn Python with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Alternatives to whois | |
|---|---|
| GNOME Nettool | Performs ping, netstat, traceroute, port scans, lookup, and whois (GUI) |
| jwhois | Improved whois client |
| ipwhois | Retrieve and parse whois data for IPv4 and IPv6 addresses |
| OpenRDAP | Command line RDAP client implementation in Go |
| quien | Terminal-based domain intelligence toolkit |
| rdapper | Simple console-based RDAP client |
| rdapper (TypeScript) | Node library that performs domain registration lookups |
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