[DBWG] Telephone and fax numbers format

Michel ODOU michel.odou at afrinic.net
Wed Dec 6 11:02:43 UTC 2017


Dear members,

The WHOIS currently accepts phone and fax numbers with the following format:

'+' <integer-list>
'+' <integer-list> "(" <integer-list> ")" <integer-list>
'+' <integer-list> ext. <integer list>
'+' <integer-list> "(" integer list ")" <integer-list> ext. <integer-list>

This makes it possible to have phone numbers like "+0 0", which is not a
valid phone number.

We are planning to make the WHOIS RFC 3966 compliant and to better check
the format of the phone number and fax number attributes. The WHOIS will
not only check that the phone number is a "possible" number but also
automatically format it to be compliant with the RFC 3966 (see [1]).

Ensuring this compliance will also help parsers, especially people that
read and parse RDAP outputs since the RFC 3966 forbids spaces in visual
separators to avoid excessive escaping (see [2]). It also helps building
phone URIs to create direct links (see [3]) to telephone numbers.

As an example, the following attributes will be possible:

phone:          +2304035100
phone:          tel: +2304035101
phone:          +230 403 5102
phone:          +230-403-5103
phone:          +2304035104,05

The WHOIS will automatically recognize the country code and the phone
number format. The previous attributes will be transformed as follows:

phone:          tel:+230-403-5100
phone:          tel:+230-403-5101
phone:          tel:+230-403-5102
phone:          tel:+230-403-5103
phone:          tel:+230-403-5104;ext=05

Note that existing records will be automatically updated if possible.
Objects that can not be updated automatically (for example, because the
phone number is not valid) will be flagged and dealt with in a second phase.

Regards,
Michel

[1] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3966
[2] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3966#section-5.1.1
[3] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3966#section-8



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