Posted: Wednesday, 21 October 2026
ACSP/Surveys

From 14 August to 14 September, ARIN held a consultation seeking feedback from the community on a proposed road map to streamline and consolidate its directory services.

This discussion covered three services; RWhois, Whois-RWS, and Port 43 WHOIS. There was robust discussion on the ARIN consultation and NANOG mailing lists that provided valuable perspectives on the path forward with each.

With community input in mind:

• RWhois will be retired 365 days after a migration tool is made available to the community.
• Outstanding parity issues between the API for Whois-RWS and RDAP will be addressed and all necessary documentation and training improvements will be made prior to deprecating the Whois-RWS API.
• The plan to replace the Whois-RWS UI (whois.arin.net) has been expanded to include publication of a beta RDAP advanced search tool to allow for more community input on this new service.
• ARIN will monitor the continued adoption of RDAP across commercial products and query traffic. We will bring the topic of Port 43 retirement back to the community for consultation when it reaches the milestones identified by the community as prerequisites of service retirement.

Before the retirement of any service, ARIN will conduct robust direct outreach and education programs for current users.

ARIN thanks those who provided valuable feedback on this consultation. We rely on this input from our members and community to help steer the organization as we continue our mission in support of the operation and growth of the Internet.

ARIN will be providing a full update on the outcome of the consultation during ARIN 58, and we would welcome your feedback on the outcome and path forward.

Regards,

John Curran
President and CEO
American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN)