Daniel, Exactly. Your posting reminds me of several things: <> The Internet is a fundamentally cooperative enterprise. While we all look forward to the increasing advantages of it *also* being a highly competitive enterprise, we have to remind ourselves that it remains fundamentally cooperative. <> We in the states have benefited from the Merit PRDB effort during the last (almost) seven years. Although the PRDB has become obsolete with the rise of the current multi-backbone/exchange-point architecture, we should understand the historic contribution of the Merit PRDB effort. <> During those seven years, the RIPE community understood that, even lacking a central backbone architecture, a routing database was valuable as a means of allowing independent competitive Internet efforts in Europe to cooperate technically in a way that promoted the growth and quality of the Internet in Europe. <> We in the States often overlook the fact that the RIPE routing database effort has succeeded in a European climate that was and is highly competitive and often contentious. We in the States need to (continue to) learn that technical cooperation is essential *especially* when business competition is present. <> Every effort should be made by providers and users to help the (national and international) Routing Registry to succeed. <> While I wouldn't term the RS as an 'enforcer', I would assert that the quality of the RS will promote the acceptance and usefulness of the RR effort generally. -- Guy

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Vadim Antonov <avg@sprint.net> writes:

Routing Registry w/o means to enforce won't be able to keep a resemblance of accurate data (not with the modus operandi of most providers in US).

We fundamentally disagree here.

I agree that the more the RR is used for actual configurations, the better the data will be.

I disagree that "enforcement" is necessary.

I disagree that "enforcement" by RS is necessary.

I observe that reasonable quality data can be gathered even when the only incentive is good citizenship and nice diagnostic tools.

Daniel