The Registration Data Access Protocol (RDAP) was designed by the Weirds Working Group of the Internet Engineering Task Force as a successor to the WHOIS protocol.
RDAP provides a way to query registration data using a RESTful web service and uniform query patterns. The service is implemented using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
AFRINIC has an RDAP service available at https://rdap.afrinic.net/rdap
The RDAP protocol addresses the deficiencies with the WHOIS protocol that have been identified over time such as
- Lack of standardised command structures
- Lack of standardised output and error structures
- Lack of support for Internationalization and localization
- Lack of support for user identification, authentication and access control
The AFRINIC RDAP provides users with an interface to query the following
- Network information by IP Address
- AS numbers by autnum
- Reverse DNS records by the domain
- Entities (such as persons, roles, organization) by identifier
How to use
How to use AFRINIC RDAP service
IP networks
https://rdap.afrinic.net/rdap/ip/<IP prefix>/<prefix length>
This query will return the "most-specific" or smallest IP network which completely encompasses it in a hierarchy of IP networks.
For example, the following URL would be used to find information for the most specific network containing 196.1.0.0/24:
https://rdap.afrinic.net/rdap/ip/196.1.0.0/24
The following URL would be used to find information for the most specific network containing 2001:42d0::/32
https://rdap.afrinic.net/rdap/ip/2001:42d0::/32
AS Numbers
https://rdap.afrinic.net/rdap/autnum/<AS number>
Used to identify autonomous system registrations and associated data referenced, for example, https://rdap.afrinic.net/rdap/autnum/37388
RDNS
https://rdap.afrinic.net/rdap/domain/<rdns object key>
Used to identify reverse DNS information and associated data referenced, for example, https://rdap.afrinic.net/rdap/domain/112.192.196.in-addr.arpa
Entity
https://rdap.afrinic.net/rdap/entity/<entity string>
Used to retrieve entity related information using an entity string identifier.
This can be an org-handle or nic-handle, for Example:
https://rdap.afrinic.net/rdap/entity/TEAM-AFRINIC
https://rdap.afrinic.net/rdap/entity/ORG-AFNC1-AFRINIC
RDAP Client
The NicInfo open source RDAP client developed by ARIN can be used to query RDAP records from the command line.
