The advisory field dates back to the old NSFnet. It was used there (and later by ANS) to determine the appropriate carrier to whom a packet would be given after the death of the PRDB and before routing policies were well established in the fullness of BGP4. I believe ANS stopped using this field some time ago and we stopped worrying about it. I believe the field is as dead as ASS690 will be in a week or two (or maybe already is). -- R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) E-mail: oberman@es.net Phone: +1 510 486-8634

--> --> -->In message <199609152255.RAA04030@rex.isdn.net>, "Mr. Jeremy Hall" writes: -->> --> -->> -->Can anyone give me a pointer to information on what the advisory attribute -->> -->in the IRR does and who pays any attention to that attribute? -->> --> -->> -->Thanks. -->> --> -->> -->> [nostats.Reston.mci.net] -->> route: 198.79.88.0/21 -->> descr: ISDNET-NET -->> origin: AS279 -->> withdrawn: 941122 -->> advisory: AS690 1:3561 -->> notify: nacr@sura.net -->> mnt-by: SURA -->> changed: sherk@sura.net 950517 -->> source: MCI -->> -->> IMHO this means that when telling AS690 about this route to prefer 3561 -->> as an exit point. -->> Is this correct? --> --> -->It means no one deleted the advisory field after the field's use was -->depricated in October 1995. --> -->Curtis --> well since we're into deprecated attributes, what did the comm_list attribute do? It appears to be gone now from that route, but at one time it was there and I think I can still dig through some to find it. The attribute always said, comm_list: comm_NSFNET -- ------------------------------------------- | Jeremy Hall Network Engineer | | ISDN-Net, Inc Office +1-615-371-1625 | | Nashville, TN and the southeast USA | | jhall@isdn.net Pager +1-615-702-0750 | -------------------------------------------

well since we're into deprecated attributes, what did the comm_list attribute do? It appears to be gone now from that route, but at one time it was there and I think I can still dig through some to find it. The attribute always said, comm_list: comm_NSFNET

I believe that all routes translated from the NSFnet PRDB to the RADB were tagged with the comm_NSFNET community list. As far as I know, no one uses that information. (Or the other three communities that Curtis cited.) If you would like the obsolete comm_list and advisory attributes removed from RADB route objects for which you are an authorized maintainer, send a note requesting this to db-admin@ra.net and we will do it for you. -Brian

In message <199609170611.BAA18883@westie.gi.net>, Alan Hannan writes:

Curtis,

While they don't inherently do anything terribly nifty, they do maintain stateful legacy information for some folks. ( Especially folks who were around when AS690 ruled the world :)

Some folks have built their scripted route filter list generation off of the information listed in the advisory field.

Maybe those people should do it in another way, but the advisory field is actively used be some.

-alan chief harbinger of advisory scripts

Hmmm.... grep av: *.db.save | awk '{print $2;}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -n 1 AS2551 1 AS3819 1 AS4690 1 AS6113 1 AS6461 1 AS6467 1 AS93 2 AS4200 2 AS6151 3 AS3491 7 AS668 8 AS1800 8 AS6076 12 AS6122 64 AS3561 70 AS1239 186 AS1275 60957 AS690 Well.. I stand corrected. It's just the 60,957 AS690 advisories that do absolutely nothing. Curtis

......... Curtis Villamizar is rumored to have said: ] ] ] In message <Pine.BSF.3.95.960915124710.8860B-100000@alive.ampr.ab.ca>, Marc Sle ] mko writes: ] > Can anyone give me a pointer to information on what the advisory attribut e ] > in the IRR does and who pays any attention to that attribute? ] > ] > Thanks. ] ] ] They do nothing and no one pays attention to them. They used to do ] something for about 5 months but everone hated them. ] ] Curtis ] ] ps- blame Merit. :-) ]