Summary

  • Tsungyi Yu's prop-163 proposed RWhois referrals so a lookup could follow transferred resources to another RIR, reach NIR records and expose downstream allocations.
  • APNIC's Secretariat said RDAP already redirected cross-RIR resources, while NIR data and downstream publication had existing paths. The proposal did not reach consensus at APNIC 59 and Yu withdrew it in September 2025 after little community feedback.

An Internet number can move while an old signpost keeps pointing at its former home. In prop-163's first draft, Yu described an ASN transferred away from APNIC whose IANA Whois lookup still sent a reader to APNIC's Whois. He wanted a referral server to direct the query to the right RIR. The same mechanism would help users descend into National Internet Registry records and, eventually, see allocations made by operators to their customers. It was an attractive image: one question, a map of who holds the answer.

The APNIC Secretariat's assessment began by opening another door. APNIC's RDAP service already redirected resources held by other RIRs, including transfers. The catch was operational rather than conceptual: a redirect could lag a processed transfer by up to two days at the time of the assessment. A new RWhois layer would therefore have to beat a working route and a fixable delay, not a blank page.

The other two doors were also partly open. NIRs with standalone Whois databases already supplied information to APNIC for publication, subject to local legal constraints, and the response's source field could identify that origin. Account holders could publish downstream data through MyAPNIC or an API. Existing policy let them mark some assignment details private to the Secretariat. Yu sought more transparent paths, but the registry had to ask who would operate them and whose customer details would appear at the other end.

APNIC favored RDAP if standalone downstream services were truly needed. In its assessment, RDAP was deployed, simpler and able to redirect; RWhois was complex, little used and unencrypted by default. Yu's draft itself acknowledged upgrade and compatibility costs. A signpost that adds another protocol can make the map harder to maintain.

The proposal history records no consensus at APNIC 59 in February 2025, a return to the mailing list in March, and Yu's withdrawal on 12 September for lack of community feedback. The useful question left behind is narrower than “should Whois be transparent?” It is which missing lookup warrants new machinery, which existing route needs repair, and who gets to decide when a downstream record stays private.