You know, that would be a great idea except for one thing. It's just too simple ;-) /Alex Kiwerski -----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu]On Behalf Of Sean Donelan Sent: Monday, April 28, 2003 4:01 PM To: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Time to bring back "Connected Status" In the beginning was the ARPANET, When SRI and BBN handled the NIC and NOC for the Internet, there was a field in the WHOIS database called "Connected Status." People could request IP networks (Class A/B/C) from SRI, but BBN would only route networks with the Connected Status on the ARPANET. You could do Whois queries to check the status of any network address. Companies could request IP addresses for internal use, without connected status. Around the time the NSFNET took over, the database sources started diverging. Connected Status was deleted from the WHOIS database. There was only one WHOIS database. NSFNET kept a seperate database of which networks were allowed to use the NSFNET. I know about all the routing specificiation language efforts, but is it possible to go back and do something simple? For networks which are announced on the Internet, add a Connected field to the regional address registries listing the AS Number(s) which could announce the network. Private, internal only networks would have an Unconnected status.