open source

Clients. Servers. Libraries.

Everything the public service runs on is published. Take the whole stack or borrow the parts you need.

lft -S -E eggs.gnu.org:587

[host]$ lft -S -E eggs.gnu.org:587

TTL LFT trace to eggs.gnu.org (209.51.188.92):587/tcp
 1  192.0.2.1 0/1/1 ±0ms
**  [neglected] no reply packets received from TTLs 2 through 4
 5  nyiix-px.jfk01.twdx.net (198.32.160.208) 2/2/2 ±0ms
 6  bbr02-ae-4-901.bos01.twdx.net (198.160.63.126) 7/7/7 ±0ms
 7  dcr03-hu-0-8-0-0.bsn04.twdx.net (198.160.62.201) 7/7/7 ±0ms
**  [firewall] the next gateway may statefully inspect packets
 8  mass-ix.fsf.org (206.53.143.61) 7/7/7 ±0ms
 9  [target open] eggs.gnu.org (209.51.188.92):587 7.4ms

featured

LFT and WhoB

Layer Four Traceroute is the all-in-one traceroute: TCP, UDP, ICMP and RFC 1393 probes; firewall traversal; ECMP diamonds; path MTU discovery; continuous watch mode; AS annotation of every hop. WhoB is the likeable whois client that tells a network engineer everything about a routed address by typing one line and reading one line. They ship together.

LFT & WhoB Download

Client software

whobCommand-line whois client customized for network engineers. Origin AS from Prefix WhoIs, RIPE RIS or Cymru; RADB origin; netname and orgname; all prefixes announced by an AS. Included with LFT.client

lftLayer Four Traceroute — advanced path discovery with AS resolution powered by Prefix WhoIs.client

pwhois-milterMail filter for Postfix and Sendmail; enriches incoming mail with the origin AS, organization, country and route age of the originating and delivering hosts.mail

pwhois-rspamdPlug-in for Rspamd; the same X-PWhois headers, symbols and variables for your rules, no separate daemon.mail

Server software

pwhoisdThe daemon. Answers whois-type queries over port 43 in pWhoIs-native, Cymru and RPSL output, single or bulk.daemon

pwhois-updatedbParses routing information bases from your routers or route-views digests and populates the relational database.ingest

Development libraries

C whois library

Full single and bulk pWhoIs support, plus functions for many other network registries and recursive lookups that dig until the answer is found. The current whois.c / whois.h ship inside LFT.

PHP

PHP client

Socket-level access to Prefix WhoIs from PHP for single lookups and batches. Requires PHP with sockets.

PHP·RIS

RIPE NCC RIS client

Companion PHP library resolving prefix data from RIPE NCC's Routing Information Service.

Built by other people

Prefix WhoIs is plain whois on TCP/43, so it fits anywhere a socket does. Community-maintained projects that build on it:

asngithub.com/nitefood/asnASN, RPKI and BGP recon plus a web traceroute server; queries whois.pwhois.org for registry, netblock and per-hop data. Packaged in Debian and Kali.community·Bash

pwhois (Go)github.com/georgestarcher/pwhoisNative TCP/43 module: IP, routeview, registry and netblock queries in batches of up to 500, rate-limit aware.community·Go

pwhois (R)github.com/hrbrmstr/pwhoisAn R package for analysts: whois.pwhois.org by default, with tidy parsers for pWhoIs and Cymru output.community·R

Net::pWhoIsmetacpan.org/pod/Net::pWhoIsCPAN module with bulk begin/end queries over one socket; returns origin AS, AS path, prefix and geolocation.community·Perl

pwhois (Python)github.com/dagonis/pwhoisPython client for single and bulk lookups.community·Python

PyPWhoisgithub.com/badfilemagic/pwhois-pyPython client aimed at OSINT work: single and bulk lookups with AS path and geolocation.community·Python

netblockgithub.com/renatosan-ti/netblockCommand-line Ruby client for whois.pwhois.org.community·Ruby

p2whoisgithub.com/avnr/p2whoisA RESTful JSON proxy in front of whois.pwhois.org — though if JSON is all you need, ask the server directly with type=json.community·Python

pwhoiscachegithub.com/bassem-essam/pwhoiscacheA local caching whois server with whois.pwhois.org upstream, for busy pipelines.community·Go

karma_v2github.com/Dheerajmadhukar/karma_v2Passive OSINT framework whose ASN mode pulls organization data from the Prefix WhoIs registry interface.community·Bash

ansible.mailstackgithub.com/variablenix/ansible.mailstackDeploys the Prefix WhoIs Milter for Postfix, with header checks for the pWhoIs headers it adds.community·Ansible

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