On July 19th, Internet Engineering Task Force (abbreviated as IETF）held a Registration Operations Workshops（ROW）In Prague, Czech. As leader of the next generation WHOIS open source project of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), Weiping Yang, technology expert at CNNIC, remotely participated in ROW and introduced the Restful WHOIS open source software, which was developed by CNNIC.

Restful WHOIS open source software is an important basic software to promote the implementation of the next generation WHOIS standards as soon as possible. It can achieve domain name query, host computer query and entity (registrar) query. According to the new international WHOIS standards, this software adopts HTTP protocol and supports IDN domain name. Its query results use JSon format. Thus, it has the advantages of formatting, structuring, and convenient response, making it easier for WHOIS providers to manage.

Aiming to solve the problem that the current WHOIS system could not sufficiently support the internationalization and security certification, ICANN required the next generation WHOIS international standards formulated by IETF to be open-sourced in 2012, and solicited project undertaker in the global scope. Finally, CNNIC stood out from ten bidders in the world and successfully won the bid.

In March this year, the next generation WHOIS international standards of IETF (RFC7480, RFC7481 and RFC7485), whose formulation CNNIC technology experts participated in, was officially released. In May, CNNIC simultaneously enabled the next generation WHOIS international standards in the Restful WHOIS open source software, providing WHOIS query service that met the new standards for the domain name users of “.公司” and “.网络”. The New gTLD WHOIS query service will effectively promote the standardization and applications of the next generation WHOIS international standards, and will provide more convenient and safer WHOIS service experience for global Internet users in the future.

The address of the next generation WHOIS open source project undertaken by CNNIC is: https://github.com/cnnic/rdap.