1835: Architecture of the WHOIS++ service.

This document describes WHOIS++, an extension to the trivial WHOIS service described in RFC 954 to permit WHOIS-like servers to make available more structured information to the Internet. We describe an extension to the simple WHOIS data model and query protocol and a companion extensible, distributed indexing service. A number of options have also been added such as the use of multiple languages and character sets, more advanced search expressions, structured data and a number of other useful features. An optional authentication mechanism for protecting all or part of the associated WHOIS++ information database from unauthorized access is also described.