In preparation for the retirement of the PRDB and the move to the Routing Arbiter (RA) architecture, Merit proposes to change our NACR-handling procedures to more closely mimic the registration procedures of the Internet Routing Registries. We propose to implement these changes on January 20, 1995. Please send any comments regarding the changes to merit-ie@merit.edu as soon as possible. Procedural changes: 1. NACRs for a given net will only be accepted from designated email addresses from the net's home AS or from the AS which is currently listed as the primary path according to the PRDB. To verify what the designated email addresses are for your Autonomous System number, use the whois client: whois -h prdb.merit.edu contact <as number> To update the designated email addresses for an Autonomous System, send email to DB-admin@ra.net. Please register the exact email address which will be used to add or change information in the PRDB. For example, if the designated email address is epg@merit.edu and the NACR is received from epg@pepper.merit.edu, it will be bounced. In general we anticipate that this change should pose little or no problem. In the event that a net changes providers, one of the following two procedures will have to be followed. Either (a) the administration of the net's home AS sends a NACR specifying the new provider as primary (and possibly deleting the old), or (b) the administration of the old provider sends the NACR. If the new provider wants to submit the NACR, they will need to send it to the administration of the home AS for forwarding to Merit. Very few administrators of home ASs which are behind ASs that peer directly with AS 690 have designated individuals and their associated email addresses as authorized to update the PRDB. For more information in establishing an aslist with Merit, please send a message to DB-admin@merit.edu. 2. ACKs/NACKs for NACRs will no longer be required, and in fact, will be ignored if received. 3. Copies of accepted NACRs will be sent to all associated ASs. This includes notification of changes to nets already in the PRDB. Typically, we would expect that all the ASs which are associated with a net would be aware of any change in routing preferences. However, this notification procedure will alert ASs that a change has taken place even if they had not previously been informed about the change. NACR Processing As of January 20, 1995, Merit will begin to implement this change. If mail to nsfnet-admin@merit.edu contains a NACR originated from an authorized account as described in procedural change (1), it will be processed. If it didn't, the mail will be bounced. If for some reason you want your NACR to be read even if it would otherwise be deemed unacceptable, include a non-null comment: field in the NACR. Summary: This is the first step in providing a transition to the RA architecture. We have been experiencing an increase in the number of NACRs which are being submitted to the NSFNET Backbone Service, many of which pertain to the movement of networks from one provider to another. For the month of December, nsfnet-admin@merit.edu received more than 4200 messages. More than 1200 changes were made to the PRDB on January 13, 1995. These new procedures will help to make the registration process more manageable. For those organizations which are in the process of changing to another provider (autonomous system), the organization can improve its chances of having changes to the PRDB made in a timely fashion and to protect itself against loss of reachability by: a. sending NACRs in advance of your cutover (at least one week) b. adding the new provider as secondary (tertiary, etc) c. having the new provider start announcing the route d. testing the route by having previous provider stop announcing the route e. sending a NACR deleting the previous provider Please check that you have designated correct email addresses for your Autonomous System prior to January 20,1995. Mail to nsfnet-admin@merit.edu which is a valid template and originates from an undesignated email address will be bounced back to the originator of the message starting on January 20, 1995. Thank you in advance for your cooperation. --Elise