Knowbot Information Service


Knowbot Information Service

(networking, information science)(KIS) Also known asnetaddress. The Knowbot Information Service (KIS) provides auniform user interface to a variety of remote directory services such as whois, finger, X.500, MCIMail. Bysubmitting a single query to KIS, a user can search a set ofremote white pages services and see the results of thesearch in a uniform format.

There are several interfaces to the KIS service includingelectronic mail and telnet. Another KIS interfaceimitates the Berkeley whois command.

KIS consists of two distinct types of modules which interactwith each other (typically across a network) to provide theservice. One module is a user agent module that runs on theKIS mail host machine. The second module is a remote servermodule (possibly on a different machine) that interrogatesvarious database services across the network and provides theresults to the user agent module in a uniform fashion.Interactions between the two modules can be via messagesbetween Knowbots or by actual movement of Knowbots.

There are electronic mail interfaces for KIS at the hostscnri.reston.va.us and sol.bucknell.edu. Send a messagecontaining just the word "man" to or. Telnet: info.cnri.reston.va.usport 185.