The whois
daemon performs database lookup operations to
satisfy incoming requests for WHOIS information. The WHOIS
protocol is defined in RFC954.
The whois
daemon supports individual lookups of domain,
contact and host (nameserver) information. In addition to this basic
queries, it supports a dump dom name
command to report full
information on a given domain.
This daemon sends statistics information and log file information to
the msgbus
for consumption by interested listeners.