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| SmartWhois Help Documentation |
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Information For Beginners It's important to understand the difference between IP addresses, hostnames, and domains. An IP address is a unique number that identifies a computer on the Internet, for example 205.181.112.65. You may want to obtain information about an IP address to find out who is the real sender of an e-mail message, or who is attacking your computer. A hostname is just an easy-to-remember name corresponding to an IP address. For example, www.microsoft.com is the name for the IP address 207.46.230.219. A whois query for www.microsoft.com and 207.46.230.219 returns exactly the same information. Domains are different from hostnames and IP addresses. A domain is a network name registered to someone. Domain queries provide information about the owner of a domain name. For example, if you want to purchase the cats.com domain name to make a web site about cats, you may want to contact the current owner of this domain to discuss the deal. To obtain the information about the domain name owner you need make a domain query. SmartWhois is capable of performing both IP address/hostname and domain name queries. IP Address / Hostname Queries To obtain information about an IP address or a hostname, just enter it in the input box and hit the Enter key, or click on the Query button and select As IP / Hostname. You can choose a recently queried IP address or host name from the drop-down list. Examples of IP addresses are 204.71.203.160, 216.115.104.67, or 195.14.130.100. Examples of hostnames are bsads.looksmart.com, jump.altavista.com, or www.ebay.com. SmartWhois also supports IP addresses with wildcards, such as 193.1.*.* or 193.1.217.* . In this case the program will scan the specified range of addresses and display all entries found. Domain Queries If you want to query a domain registration database, enter a domain name and hit the Enter key while holding the Ctrl key, or just select As Domain from the Query drop-down menu. The examples of valid domain names are netcom.com, volvo.se, or digiserve.co.uk. Don't use the "www" prefix in your domain queries; for example www.microsoft.com is not a valid domain query (albeit a valid hostname query). Custom Queries If you need to query a non-default whois server or make a special query, click View => Whois Console from the menu, or click Query button and select Custom Query. SmartWhois uses 4 main servers for IP queries and more than 20 regional whois servers to obtain domain registration records. Note that there are many countries that don't have whois databases, and information for such national domains cannot be obtained. SmartWhois currently covers: International domains: COM, NET, ORG, INFO, BIZ, COOP, NAME, AERO, MUSEUM, and INT; US domains: EDU, GOV, MIL, and US; Almost all of the European domains; Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, South Korea, China, and a number of other countries. Clipboard Queries If you would like to query information located on the clipboard, click Query => Clipboard and select the preferred query type. This option is available in both main window and tray icon menus. When selecting the As IP / Hostname or As Domain query type, SmartWhois will perform the respective query for the first word found in the clipboard text. If text contains a list of IP addresses, hostnames, or domains, select the As IP / Hostname List or As Domain List option. In case the program window is inactive, you will still be able to perform queries by using hotkeys that can be assigned to any of the above-mentioned commands. Please see the Configuring SmartWhois chapter for more information on using hotkeys. Please note that hotkeys are disabled by default. Window Queries To query information located in the active window, right-click the SmartWhois icon located in the tray and select Query => Current Window. Next, select the desired query type. When selecting the As IP / Hostname or As Domain query type, SmartWhois will perform the respective query for the first word found in the active window. If text contains a list of IP addresses, hostnames, or domains, select the As IP / Hostname List or As Domain List option. If you need to process just a part of the text in the window, highlight it before performing the query. In case the program window is inactive, you will still be able to perform queries by using hotkeys that can be assigned to any of the above-mentioned commands. Note: this option is available for windows that support standard system text extraction methods only. Please see the Configuring SmartWhois chapter for more information on using hotkeys. Please note that hotkeys are disabled by default. |
