What is Referral Whois (RWhois)?

With the exponential growth of the Internet, a central Whois database that
provides host and network information of systems connected to the Internet,
and electronic mail (email) addresses of the users of those systems has
proven to be very inefficient. The sheer size and effort needed to maintain
a centralized database necessitates an alternate, decentralized approach to
storing and retrieving this information.

RWhois is a Directory Services protocol which extends and enhances the Whois
concept in a hierarchical and scaleable fashion. It focuses on the
distribution of "network objects"--the data representing Internet resources
or people--and uses the inherently hierarchical nature of these network
objects (domain names, Internet Protocol (IP) networks, email addresses) to
more accurately discover the requested information.

RWhois synthesizes concepts from other, established Internet protocols to
create a more useful way to find resources across the Internet. The RWhois
protocol and architecture derive a great deal of structure from the Domain
Name System (DNS) [RFC 1034] and borrow directory service concepts from
other directory service efforts, primarily [X.500]. The protocol is also
influenced by earlier established Internet protocols, such as the Simple
Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP) [RFC 821] for response codes.

WWW: http://www.rwhois.net/