The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (30 December 2018):

Knowbot Information Service
KIS
netaddress

    (KIS) Also known as
   netaddress.  The Knowbot Information Service (KIS) provides a
   uniform user interface to a variety of remote directory
   services such as whois, finger, X.500, MCIMail.  By
   submitting a single query to KIS, a user can search a set of
   remote white pages services and see the results of the
   search in a uniform format.

   There are several interfaces to the KIS service including
   electronic mail and telnet.  Another KIS interface
   imitates the Berkeley whois command.

   KIS consists of two distinct types of modules which interact
   with each other (typically across a network) to provide the
   service.  One module is a user agent module that runs on the
   KIS mail host machine.  The second module is a remote server
   module (possibly on a different machine) that interrogates
   various database services across the network and provides the
   results to the user agent module in a uniform fashion.
   Interactions between the two modules can be via messages
   between Knowbots or by actual movement of Knowbots.

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