> > Why don't they publish a more detailled
explanation field
> in each IANA
> > allocation record so that they can explain the
precise
> status of each
> > block?
>
> IANA's role in this should be 'Ugh. Here Big Block.
Go Talk to RIR.'
I was referring to the cases where they don't say that.
For instance, the text file has 4 columns. Address Block
and Date are pretty clear and straightforward. The last
two fields, however are explicitly ambiguous. One is
entitled "Registry - Purpose" and the other is
labelled
"Notes or Reference". And immediate improvement
would
be a whois server that serves up 6 data items per entry
such as:
AddressBlock: 010
Date: Jun 95
Registry: None
Purpose: Private Use
Notes:
Reference: RFC1918
In the case of 7/8, that Notes field could contain a couple
sentences to explain the unusual situation of that block.
If course, it would be good to add a few other fields there
as well, such as
Whois: whois://ws.arin.net:43
in order to provide a referral chain as one person
mentioned.
Or, maybe all this is already defined in the RIR database
schemas
and IANA should just adopt the same schema.
Note that for some blocks, useful additional info could be
placed
there such as:
AddressBlock: 019
Date: May 95
Registry: None
Purpose: Direct Assignment
Notes: Ford Motor Company
Reference:
Whois: whois://ws.arin.net:43 FINET
which gives the RIR holding additional info and the NetName
tag
to use when looking it up there.
The bottom line is that lots of organizations, not just
ISPs, want to
see a complete and up-to-date picture of the status of the
entire IPv4
space (and Ipv6 space someday) because criminals are using
hijacked IP
addresses to hide their identities. They believe that the
whois
directories, collectively, should identify the organization
who has
administrative control of any IP address and should lead to
a technical
contact who is ready, willing and able to act when informed
about
network issues, whether they are abuse issues or some other
technical
problem. The current whois system has no authoritative root
leading to
large gaps in the data. And the lack of a root means that
the 5 RIRs all
do different things, leading to large amounts of garbage
data in the
system. Even when this data accurately identifies an
organization, it
often turns out that the organization either doesn't have
administrative
control over its network or else they have no technical
contacts who are
ready, willing and able to act when contacted.
I believe that fixing the IANA issues will lead to the
others being
addressed.
--Michael Dillon
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