At 20:31 17-5-00 , Wilfried Woeber, UniVie/ACOnet wrote:
Jake Khoun: I had a proposal: The behaviour of whois server could be to search all sources, instead of only RIPE source, and, to stop at the first match.
David Kessens: I think the main reason for current default behaviour was to save computer resources. But I don't think that this is the case anymore. We must be able to change the default behaviour. But I don't like the idea of stopping at the first match.
This is a bad idea. Many people querying the RIPE NCC whois server do so with the intention to obtain authoritative information from the RIPE DB, and they get just that by default. Changing this behaviour would result in a lot of confusion, irritation and serious user support load. Given the fact that those who want to see data from all sources can obtain that by just adding '-a' to their queries, such a change is totally unnecessary. Daniel