Whois

Program that queries the InterNIC 's database of domain names .

An Internet database that provides information on a person or an organization.

An Internet program which allows users to query a database of people and other Internet entities, such as domains, networks, and hosts, kept at the DDN NIC. The information for people shows a person's company name, address, phone number and email address. See also: Defense Data Network Network ..., white pages, Knowbot, X.500. [Source: FYI4]

An internet utility that you can use to look up information about an internet site in the registry database at Internic or elsewhere,ARIN(American Registry of Internet Numbers),in Europe(RIPE).

This is an Internet service that finds information about a domain name or IP address. If you enter a domain name in a WHOIS search engine, it will scour a huge database of domains and return information about the one you entered. This information typically contains the name, address, and phone number of the administrative and technical contacts of the domain name. WHOIS can also be used to simply check if a certain domain name is available or if it has already been registered. To see the WHOIS service in action, check out Allwhois.com or BetterWhois.com.