An Iranian firm has launched a service familiar to international website users, a Whois site. The new site, which provides detailed website ownership information in Persian, has been launched to meet the growing demands of Internet activity in the region with localized content. Called whoisit.ir, the locally hosted protocol site aims to grab a share of the traditional website information market, according to Webna. Launched by Moein Nahri in Bandar Anzali, Gilan Province, the site is the first take on a business that until recently has been dominated by American competitors like Domaintools and Whois.net.The Whois protocol had its origin in the ARPANET Nickname Protocol and was based on the Name/Finger Protocol, described in RFC 742 (1977). The Nickname/Whois Protocol was first described in RFC 812 in 1982 by Ken Harrenstien and Vic White of the Network Information Center at SRI International.
