The RDAP Initiative
Over the last several years, a large number of people have worked diligently to explore alternatives in both technology and policy to address the limitations of the WHOIS protocol.
A new protocol known as the Registration Data Access Protocol, or RDAP, was developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force’s (IETF's) WHOIS-based Extensible Internet Registration Data Service (WEIRDS) working group. The WEIRDS working group developed specifications for RDAP that were published as Request For Comment (RFC) documents 7480, 7481, 7482, 7483, and 7484. The RDAP documents are currently maintained by the IETF Registration Protocols Extensions (REGEXT) working group.
This new protocol was designed from the ground-up to address the WHOIS protocol's lack of:
- Standardized command structures
- Standardized output and error structures
- Support for internationalization and localization
- Support for user identification, authentication and access control
The RDAP Experiment
The Verisign Labs developed pilot implementations of RDAP, and has been actively involved with IETF and ICANN efforts to support standardization and adoption.
The RDAP pilot for .com and .net is complete. Verisign deployed a production-quality RDAP service in August, 2019. Information describing the service can be found on this web page.
Email Verisign Labs to learn more.