A core DNS service provider is a company who provides DNS service for the root level of the DNS tree (ICANN-sanctioned root operators).

 AFRINIC is bound by Section 4(g) of the Registration Service Agreement (RSA) to non disclosure of any information that we receive from our members. The AFRINIC hostmaster team usually requests for supporting information to verify the information given in the online registration process.  The documentation supplied will be used solely to evaluate the requests against the AFRINIC policies in place.

AFRINIC needs funds to sustain its operations , and therefore bills its members a fee calculated on the type and number of resources they hold. The AFRINIC fees schedule is available online . The fees may change from year to year according to operational costs and financial health of the organisation and upon validation by the Board of Directors.

AFRINIC is not involved in domain name registration. Your ISP may be able to help you register a domain name. For more information about TLDs (Top Level Domains) and ccTLDs (Country Code Top Level Domain) registrations, please visit the ICANN website

AFRINIC WHOIS data is for Internet Operations or Technical Research related to the Internet purpose only. It should not be used for advertising, direct marketing, marketing research or similar purpose. Use of AFRINIC WHOIS bulk data for these activities is explicitly forbidden. The redistribution of the provided bulk data is also explicitly forbidden.

If your organsiation usage of the data comply with thes terms and conditions then submit a request for AFRINIC Bulk Whois Data.

The Bulk WHOIS request form can be downloaded from here. Complete the form by filling all the required details. As the hostmaster will approve the request only if the requester has provided all the necessary information required for Bulk WHOIS. The completed form should be either fax to AFRINIC Ltd on +230 466 6758 or sent via email to hostmaster@AFRINIC.net. As soon as the request is approved the hostmaster will send you the link to access the Bulk WHOIS along with the user name and password. 

AFRINIC does not support the "rwhois" protocol formerly available to members from the ARIN service region. All (re)assignments and sub-allocations MUST be recorded in the AFRINIC whois database according to the procedure detailed here.

Abusive behaviour regarding whois queries will automatically be blocked. The  process is detailed in Section1.7 of the database reference manual.

You must send your request to hostmaster@afrinic.net

AFRINIC does not guarantee that any address space it allocates will be globally routable. This is because the filtering policies implemented by transit providers around the world are beyond our control. The best way to avoid filtering problems is to ensure that your network is numbered into the address range of a larger network , so that many addresses can be aggregated and announced globally as a single route. The shorter prefix of such a global route will increase its chances of being unaffected by the filtering policies of large transit providers. We have carried out extensive tests to ensure that the minimum allocation (/22) from AFRINIC blocks is not filtered.

Please see a detailed page dedicated to this question here

The AFRINIC Database is a public database that contains information about registered IP address space and AS numbers, routing policies,and reverse DNS delegations in the AFRINIC region. It is used for Internet network management.

There are very good documents that explain the working of the AFRINIC whois database: The AFRINIC DB reference manual and the AFRINIC DB supporting document. If you still find lots of complications even after reading these documents, we advise that you enrol for one of our LIR training courses, the schedule of which is available at the training section of the AFRINIC website.

There are two methods to query the whois database:

Command Line Interface: using whois client which can be downloaded from here.
Web Based Interface: using whois query page at our website.

The AFRINIC database reference manual is available on the AFRINIC website here