Why doesn't IANA and the RIRs collectively get off their butts and actually make an "authoritative IP address allocation directory" one of their goals? And why don't they do all this with some 21st century technology?
A new system based on IRIS protocol (XML based using BEEP as transport) will be in place in the future that will work better as a comprehensive directory.
I have heard of no such plans. As far as I know, IRIS was designed for domain name registry whois data which is entirely a separate issue from IP address whois data. Also, I do not consider a complex XML-based protocol to be 21st century technology. In the 20th century, when you wanted to do something on the net you invented a new protocol and hacked together some application. In the 21st century, you look at what is available on the shelf and widely in use on the net and adopt that. Most often this turns out to be a RESTful API that doesn't even need XML, although something like XML-RPC still fits the bill. I still wonder why the widely used LDAP protocol can't be adopted for whois lookups since it is used everywhere in the corporate world. The answer seems to be Not-Invented-Here or "we're netheads and LDAP smells of bellheads", both of which are ridiculous arguments in the today's world. --Michael Dillon