30th April 2026
Japan Network Information Center
Notice of Character Encoding Changes Associated with the Renewal of the WHOIS Service
JPNIC would like to announce that, as part of the renewal of the WHOIS service, changes to the service environment are scheduled to be implemented in or around July 2027.
Under this renewal, the display character encoding of the WHOIS service is scheduled to be changed to UTF-8. Accordingly, the new environment will be made available under a different hostname, and after a certain period of parallel operation, the production hostname will be switched over to the new environment.
Changes to the Display Character Encoding
As part of the renewal of the WHOIS service, the display character encoding of the WHOIS service is scheduled to be changed.
Display character encoding for the current whois.nic.ad.jp and for whois-old.nic.ad.jp, which will be provided after the hostname cutover: Shift_JIS (Web interface), ISO-2022-JP (command-line interface) Display character encoding for whois-new.nic.ad.jp, which will be used to verify the new environment, and for whois.nic.ad.jp after the hostname cutover: UTF-8
Schedule for Changes to the Service Environment
The current WHOIS service is provided at whois.nic.ad.jp.
As part of the renewal, whois-new.nic.ad.jp is scheduled to be made available around January 2027 as a hostname for verification of the new environment. After that, the production hostname, whois.nic.ad.jp, is scheduled to be switched over to the new environment around July 2027.
After the production cutover, the old environment is planned to remain available for a certain period at whois-old.nic.ad.jp. In addition, the hostname for verification of the new environment, whois-new.nic.ad.jp, is also planned to remain available for a certain period.
The hostnames currently planned are as follows.
- Current WHOIS service: whois.nic.ad.jp
- WHOIS service for verification of the new environment: whois-new.nic.ad.jp
- Hostname for the old environment after cutover: whois-old.nic.ad.jp
Access Methods
The WHOIS service can be accessed via communication to the following two port numbers:
- 43/TCP (WHOIS protocol)
- 443/TCP (HTTPS)
Action Requested
Users who continue to use the WHOIS service are requested to verify during the parallel operation period, currently scheduled for January through June 2027, that information can be retrieved correctly in UTF-8 using whois-new.nic.ad.jp.
In particular, if you use automated processing, screen display, log collection, or other operations that depend on character encoding, please verify whether there will be any impact.
Future Schedule
The schedule is subject to change depending on the progress of the renewal work. Further details, including the timing of the publication of the new environment, the cutover timing for the production FQDN, and the period during which the old environment will remain available, will be announced separately once preparations are complete.
