Hot do I trace an IP address?

[Jim Reid]

>>>>> "Peter" == Peter Rose <peter.rose1 at ntlworld.com> writes:

    >> I have an IP address that does not resolve to a hostname.  I
    >> need to find out who owns that IP address.  Is there a
    >> utility/tool or a website that will allow me to do that?

    Peter> nslookup your.ip.address to get hostname.

    Peter> Then do a whois on the hostname

This "advice" is not at all helpful or useful. The original poster
said that reverse lookups (address to name) don't work for some IP
address. So how can nslookup - a brain-dead tool at the best of times
- possibly succeed when it's already known there's no hostname for
that IP address? Even if that worked, running whois on the resulting
hostname won't work either. First of all, which of the hundreds of
whois servers should be queried? [Maybe www.allwhois.com could be
tried, but that's a web site, not a whois server.] Secondly, whois
databases are often sparsely populated. Sometimes this is for reasons
of sloth/apathy/indifference, sometimes it's an attempt to reduce
spam. Finally, most whois servers only answer for domain names. Some
can answer for hostnames when the hosts have been entered in a
top-level domain/zone as glue for a delegation.