Dear Colleagues, Between 20 January and 17 February 2016, ICANN will be initiating a large volume of WHOIS queries of gTLD registrations as part of its WHOIS Accuracy Reporting System (ARS) project utilizing the following IP addresses to perform the WHOIS queries: IP Addresses: 192.0.32.230/31 and 192.0.47.230/31 A gTLD can expect to receive query rates of 10 queries per minute; we have accounted for RSP’s with multiple gTLD’s and will attempt to limit the queries to 10 per minute across a RSP. We kindly request and appreciate your cooperation in allowing these queries to be processed and ask that you please whitelist the IP addresses provided above. As a reminder, the WHOIS ARS project was established to perform periodic studies to assess the accuracy of the contact information in the WHOIS data, with a goal of identifying opportunities to improve the accuracy of this data over time. The project was established to implement a series of improvements recommended by the WHOIS Review Team and approved by the Board (8 November 2012) on the manner in which ICANN carries out its responsibilities regarding WHOIS. This collection of data will support the next cycle in the WHOIS ARS, Phase 2 Cycle 2, which aims to assess syntax and operability accuracy of the contact information in a gTLD WHOIS record. Accuracy will be determined with respect to the requirements of the WHOIS record’s applicable version of the Registrar Accreditation Agreement. ICANN will pull a sample of approximately 200,000 WHOIS records across the entire gTLD name space, and will then perform accuracy testing on a subsample of those records. We published a report (https://whois.icann.org/en/file/whois-ars-phase-2-cycle-1-report-syntax-and-...) for Phase 2 Cycle 1 on 23 December 2015 and plan to publish a report of the findings of Phase 2 Cycle 2 in June 2016. More information about the project can be found on whois.icann.org: https://whois.icann.org/en/whoisars. Thank you for your cooperation, ICANN’s GDD Operations Team