Effective April 2, 2002, Merit Network, Inc. will begin the process of removing RADB maintainer objects that have not been renewed and paid for 2002. This message is to inform the community about our clean-up process so that RADB users can take measures to minimize any operational impact. All maintainers scheduled for removal will be posted before March 15, 2002 at http://www.radb.net/docs/deletelist.html. Currently, about 2,100 maintainers with 52,000 total objects are unpaid and scheduled for removal beginning April 2 unless payment is made. Of the total 2,100 maintainers, 1,100 have associated valid objects in the RADB. These 1,100 maintainers, in turn, have 22,000 associated valid objects that are currently being routed in the Internet. For example, eleven of the top twenty maintainers (in terms of number of total objects) have not yet been renewed and are scheduled for removal. We are currently making a targeted effort to remind the owners of maintainers with valid objects about the deadline. About 1,000 "stale" maintainers with either invalid objects or no objects at all will be removed as part of the clean-up. All maintainer IDs scheduled for removal will be posted on the RADB Clean-up web page at http://www.radb.net/docs/deletelist.html before March 15, 2002. As of today, only some of the maintainers have been posted. At the same URL, you will also find a tool to check for a specific maintainer and associated objects (if any) targeted for removal. If you are filtering routes based on the RADB, we urge you to stay abreast of this information. We will be providing regular updates via the NANOG list and on the web page. The RADB service fee for January 1, 2002 through December 31, 2002 is $250 per maintainer object. The RADB service agreement must be renewed annually. Merit's policy, as specified in the agreement, is to remove maintainers that have not been renewed and paid. As a non-profit organization, Merit does not pursue profit as a goal. The $250 maintainer fee is strictly a cost recovery mechanism that helps support the ongoing 24x7 operations of the RADB. Costs that Merit must cover through maintainer fees include contracting for 24x7 NOC monitoring; server maintenance and connectivity; help-desk support; second-level 24x7 on-call engineering; and maintenance of the IRRd database server software that powers the RADB. We welcome your input on the RADB clean-up. The Merit RADB team will be on hand to discuss questions and concerns about the database clean-up during the Route Registry BOF at NANOG24 on Monday, 9:00-10:30 PM. We hope you'll join us! URLS: To view or query the list of maintainer IDs scheduled for removal: http://www.radb.net/docs/deletelist.html To review the RADB maintainer object agreement: http://www.radb.net/docs/agreement.html To renew RADB service and pay for your maintainer object: https://www.merit.edu/cgi-bin/radb/pay/alive For general information: http://www.radb.net For Merit RADB, Chris Frazier