On 10/05/2010 17:58, Jared Mauch wrote:
On May 10, 2010, at 12:48 PM, Nick Hilliard wrote:
- there are some endemic data reliability problems with the IRRDBs, exacerbated by the fact that on most of the widely-used IRRDBs, there is no link between the RIR and the IRRDB, which means that anyone can register any address space. whois.ripe.net doesn't allow this, but lots of other IRRDBs do.
Certainly this is a function that you can petition your local RIR to do, have you made a proposal to them?
RIPE does this automatically. But I have no idea how this sort of thing would be implemented between an RIR like ARIN and an IRRDB like whois.radb.net.
- the ripe whois server software does not support server-side as-set expansion. This is a really serious problem if you're expanding large ASNs.
Have you asked them to include this?
I've enquired informally and was left with the impression that it would be difficult; the RIPE DB code is troublesome, and there are line protocol differences between the ripe server and the merit server which would make parsing an interesting proposition.
I certainly agree the tools here are suboptimal, but is that the the reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater?
Not at all - I use prefix filtering in anger, and it works very well in its place.
Who is going to be the provider that turns away business because their customer is unwilling to register their routes in a klunky-toolset?
Lots. They'll certainly take on the business, but I know of several well-known names who provide service in Dublin and who won't accept your prefixes unless they are registered in an IRRDB.
What improvements to the toolset should go back to the community to improve filtering?
If you're offering to hack code, great - email me offline :-) Nick