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ARTICLE · 24 FEBRUARY 2025

WHOIS Has Been Replaced By RDAP: How Do The Two Systems Compare?

Overseen by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the WHOIS protocol has been used since the early days of the internet to retrieve relevant information...

European UnionPrivacy

The Registration Data Access Protocol (RDAP) became the official source for accessing registration data for generic Top-level Domain (gTLD) names on 28 January 2025, replacing the now obsolete WHOIS service. Marc-Emmanuel Mellet explains what this means in practice.

Overseen by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the WHOIS protocol has been used since the early days of the internet to retrieve relevant information from the domain name database about the people or entities that registered a domain. On 28 January 2025, it was officially abandoned in favour of the Registration Data Access Protocol (RDAP), which offers a more modern and structured alternative.

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