DESCRIPTION

     whob queries various sources of whois information for data of interest to
     network operators and their tracing and debugging tools.

     whob output is designed to be easily parsed, or better yet, its function-
     ality can be added directly into your programs (see whois.h).

     The only mandatory parameter is the target host name or IP number.
     Options toggle the display of more interesting data or change the sources
     used to obtain that data.

     One key advantage of whob is its lookup of ASN information derived from
     the global Internet routing table itself, as opposed to relying solely on
     what has been registered in the RADB/IRR (see below).  This data is, by
     default, sourced from the global pWhoIs service.  See www.pwhois.org

     Other options are:

     -a ASN  Display all routing advertisements made by the respective Origin-
	     AS.  The Origin-AS may be supplied as the target argument, or a
	     hostname or IP address may be supplied and whob will resolve the
	     ASN automatically.

     -P prefix
	     Display all routing advertisements related to the CIDR prefix
	     supplied by the user.

     -N ASN  Display all networks registered to the ASN supplied by the user.

     -O ASN  Display all contact information on file for the ASN supplied by
	     the user.

     -g      GIGO mode.  Takes input directly from the command line and passes
	     it without modification to pWhoIs.  Returns the exact pWhoIs out-
	     put without any parsing.  Useful for testing or complicated cus-
	     tom queries.

     -R      Display the Origin-AS on record at the RADB/IRR (Routing Arbiter
	     Database/Internet Routing Registry) in addition the the Origin-AS
	     provided by the prefix-based whois data source.

     -n      Display the network name on record with the IP network allocation
	     registry also such as ARIN, RIPE, or APNIC.

     -o      Display the organization name on file at the registrar.

     -p      Display the AS-Path from the perspective of the current pwhois
	     server.  The pwhois server may automatically exclude the initial,
	     least specific ASN received from the operator of the network to
	     which it is connected (unless that ASN is the only/origin ASN or
	     unless it has multiple peers). Of course, this AS-Path is subjec-
	     Read from the specified file and submit its contents as bulk
	     input to pwhois.  The input will be buffered accordingly and sub-
	     ject to the constraints of the current pwhois server.  Output is
	     written to STDOUT (which may be redirected) and will not be
	     parsed.  Additional instructions to pwhois may be placed at the
	     beginning of the file, however they will only apply to the first
	     buffer of pwhois input.  The first (left-most) field in each line
	     of the file must be the IP address and lines may be up to 255
	     characters in length.

     -c      Change the source of prefix-based whois data from the default
	     (pWhoIs) to Cymru.  See www.cymru.com for more details.  When
	     used with the -f option, this switch requests Cymru-compatible
	     output format from the pWhoIs server used for the bulk query.

     -r      Display the Origin-AS and prefix according to RIPE NCC RIS (see
	     www.ripe.net/projects/ris/)

     -s      Show the status of the (respective) pWhoIs server and exit(0)

     -V      Display verbose/debug output.  Use multiple 'V's for additional
	     verbosity.

     -v      Display this client's version information and exit(1)

AUTHORS

     Victor Oppleman and Eugene Antsilevitch

REPORTING BUGS

     To report bugs, send e-mail to <whob@oppleman.com>

SEE ALSO

     lft(8), whois(1)

HISTORY

     The whob command first appeared in 2004.  This whois framework has been a
     component of LFT since 2002.

WHOB				August 17, 2002 			  WHOB