On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 07:37:00PM -0500, Frank Bulk wrote:
Perhaps this is a stupid question, but does each SP need to run their own physical RR? Isn't this something that could be hosted?
The data itself is stored on a distributed network of databases, so there is technically no reason any SP needs to run their own. However, they often do, because when a customer can't figure something out it gives them access to go in and tweak the customers' records for them. Unfortunately the distributed nature of the databases is one of the biggest problems with the IRR system. Anyone can run an irrd, there is no inherient authentication of the data. In order to get your irrd "recognized" all you have to do is get mirrored by a database that other people query and boom you're in the system. What tends to happen is someone puts a route into a database and then completely forgets about it, so there are a huge number of completely bogus routes out there which are never going to get cleaned up. The other problem is that when a SP has a customer who "can't figure it out", a typical course of action is to just "register the route for them" rather than try to explain it to them. Unfortunately, the same thing as above happens here, you end up with a big pile of people who register a big pile of routes in a big pile of random databases, often times completely unnecessarily, and they'll never be removed either. The biggest problem with the entire system is the way that data gets into it, and the lack of incentive for people to ever remove data from it. But as a mechanism to allow the routes which need to be allowed, and mostly prevent accidental leaks, it works. For more information, take a look at: http://www.nanog.org/meetings/nanog44/presentations/Tuesday/RAS_irrdata_N44.... -- Richard A Steenbergen <ras@e-gerbil.net> http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras GPG Key ID: 0xF8B12CBC (7535 7F59 8204 ED1F CC1C 53AF 4C41 5ECA F8B1 2CBC)