Sean Donelan, May 14 1998 (three employers ago, so this should not be taken as representing the official position any of my past, present or future employers)
Yakhov, Elise, Mark, and Bill - 1994 as part of the RA project, bringers of the RAdb.
This gets to the heart of the matter. It is now 8 years later and RADB is not catching on. But during the same time period some other UMich people worked on a more general purpose directory service called LDAP and that one is catching on. LDAP technology can be made to do the job that we need done and instead of having to create tools from scratch we can leverage a lot of commercial tools to deal with the core functions.
--Michael Dillon
The implementation (RAdb/RPSL/IRR/LDAP/SWIP/rwhois) is, to a large degree, immaterial. The idea of publishing the IANA/RIR/ISP reserved pool in a tagged format that is machine parsable is the key. That we are unable to get to that point is telling. Its fairly easy to identify the IANA reserved /8 blocks. Its harder to identify the RIR reserved space (space delegated to RIRs that is not yet delegated to downstreams). Harder yet, identifying ISP reserved space (space delegated to ISPs that is not yet delegated to downstreams/endsystems). You should ask yourself, why is it important at one level and not important elsewhere? If you want a comprehensive map of IP space not in active use, then make the compelling case for it and build the tools that are so easy to use, everyone will adopt them. I've not seen a compelling case for just the IANA and not the RIRs or just the IANA and RIRs but not the ISPs. I've seen a compelling case for -EVERYONE- to participate in tracking IP space in use, but the tools that cover the range of useage are jsut not here. LDAP is not the cureall. Its a tool and some folks can make it work. Its too much overhead for most folks and for some parts of the delegation heirarchy. Now we could have the debate on -WHY- ldap/whois is considered so important. The applications use things like DNS mappings and routing announcements. These are critical for network operations. ldap/whois are not. --bill