jwhois

jwhois is an Internet Whois client that contains an extensible configuration file, which defines its operation. The client supports queries to foreign hosts, either through the RFC 954 - NICNAME/WHOIS protocol, the RFC 2167 - Referral Whois 1.5 protocol, or HTTP using an external browser. Upon execution, it searches through its configuration to find the most specific whois server to query. Depending upon the reply from that whois server, it can assume the query was successfull and display the result to the user, or optionally redirect the query to another server to find more specific information.