WHOIS over SSH via specific port

Question

Is it possible to issue WHOIS requests via my local machine over a port other than 43 to a remote box to execute? Ideally, I'm using Jsch and I'd like to be able to round-robin these requests. I've looked in /etc/services, didn't learn much. Anytime I specify a port other than 43, the whois request hangs (whois -p 4999 74.125.224.72).

I know about the RIR's and their various limits, and I realize that I could pay somewhere like DomainTools. But let's be honest, that wouldn't as much fun, would it?

Answer 1

$ proxychains whois example.org
ProxyChains-3.1 (http://proxychains.sf.net)
|R-chain|-<>-127.0.0.1:1080-<><>-199.15.84.131:43-<><>-OK
Access to .ORG WHOIS information is provided to assist persons in 
determining the contents of a domain name registration record in the 
....
...
....
DS Key Tag 2:31589
Algorithm 2:8
Digest Type 2:2
Digest 2:3fdc4c11fa3ad3535ea8c1ce3eaf7bfa5ca9ae8a834d98fee10085cfaeb625aa
DS Maximum Signature Life 2:1814400 seconds

Config of proxychains /etc/proxychains.conf contain this:

socks5          127.0.0.1       1080

Socks5 setup:

$ ssh -D 1080 user@server