RE: Question on 7.0.0.0/8

> Come on, let's not get carried away.
> 
> The problem with the IANA file is that
"reserved" is ambiguous and  
> there are other things in there that get in the way of
easy parsing.  
> This is easy enough to fix. Geoff Huston wrote a draft

> suggesting how  
> to do it.
> 
> Whois, LDAP and other stuff like that only makes things
worse 
> because  
> this requires you to walk through the data rather than
have it  
> available in a nice, easy to handle text file.

Yes, let's not get carried away. The data is already
available in a
nice, easy to handle text file for those that simply want to
look at a
simple listing. But for those who NEED to parse it with
automated
systems and who NEED to know when things have changed, an
IANA whois
server is a better solution. Whois has things like Regdate,
Updated, and
a Comment field which just don't fit in a simple text file.

And let's also not get carried away with writing Internet
drafts to tell
IANA how to fix a problem that they really should be
INDEPENDENTLY
fixing because it is the right thing to do. I would like to
see IANA
respond to complaints, but I would not like to see IANA sit
on their
hands and wait until the IETF discusses and passes an RFC to
define what
IANA  should be doing.

Also, my comments about RESTful API, XML-RPC and LDAP were
directed at
ARIN, not at IANA. 

--Michael Dillon

> But for those who NEED to parse it with automated
> systems and who NEED to know when things have changed,
an IANA whois
> server is a better solution. Whois has things like
Regdate, Updated, and
> a Comment field which just don't fit in a simple text
file.

Just to note, I believe that Leo Vegoda touched on IANA
developing a whois service for IP Addressing at the last
UKNOF meeting in 
Manchester; however I may have been mistaken/
misunderstood.

http:/
/www.uknof.org.uk/uknof7/Vegoda-IANA.pdf

>From his talk however, I do believe they are trying to
make their interaction with the community better and also
provide the 
services that we ask of them.

S



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On 16-apr-2007, at 14:30, <michael.dillonbt.com>  
<michael.dillonbt.com> wrote:

>> Whois, LDAP and other stuff like that only makes
things worse
>> because this requires you to walk through the data
rather than  
>> have it
>> available in a nice, easy to handle text file.

> Yes, let's not get carried away. The data is already
available in a
> nice, easy to handle text file for those that simply
want to look at a
> simple listing. But for those who NEED to parse it with
automated
> systems and who NEED to know when things have changed,
an IANA whois
> server is a better solution.

No, it's not. My scripts currently retrieve the file,
compare what's  
in there with what's in the database and complain when there
is a  
difference. All simple enough. The only problem is that I
need a  
bunch of special case logic and have to check up manually to
make  
sure that everything is categorized correctly.

With whois, I'd need to do 256 lookups, and I'd probably
have to  
implement the whois protocol myself (ok, trivial, but still)
because  
I can't just use one of the 3 million HTTP utils/libraries.

On Apr 16, 2007, at 2:48 PM, Steve Wright wrote:

[...]

> Just to note, I believe that Leo Vegoda touched on IANA
developing  
> a whois service for IP Addressing at the last UKNOF
meeting in  
> Manchester; however I may have been mistaken/
misunderstood.

Yes, we're working hard on making our registry data as easy
to access  
as possible. We're also working with the RIRs to update the
data IPv4  
registry. We have made a few updates over the last few
months and are  
working on others.

Regards,

-- 
Leo Vegoda
IANA Numbers Liaison