Question on % of good routes and plea for an RA mail list was Re: Routing registry was Re: Sprint BGP filters in 207.x.x.x?

Wed Jan 3 19:00:52 UTC 1996

Gordan:

On Thursday 12/28 you enclosed with the text below:

>May I ask: Is AS690 the Autonomus System number for ANS? I understand 
>indeed that the PRDB was ANS specific but how exactly did that make the 
>Ripe Database a better format? If it was a better format, it couldn't be 
>used because the PRDB had components that were not transferrable to 
>RIPE? Are you saying that to transfer the ANS database into RIPE format 
>would have taken a very sizable number of person months?

To help you understand the PRDB, I offer some historical
information from an engineer's perspective: 

  The concepts and the some of the code for the PRDB database system
  predate even ANS's creation.  The PRDB concepts come from
  the early days of the NSFNET and trying to run that specific network.
  The multiple ISP/NSP world has come upon the Internet to replace
  the NSFNET.  This change was requested by some people to provide
  a fair marketplace in the Internet.

  The routing registration shift from PRDB to RIPE/IRR
  format reflects a shift in the Internet reality, not an
  ANS database specific project.  The effort to keep the NSFNET
  service current was an engineering effort over years.
  We moved from 1/3 T1 to T1 to T3.  Our databases also migrated
  implementations and service capabilities.  The PRDB was the
  third in a series of the databases.  RIPE could be considered
  the fourth.   

I hope this has helped fill in some history around Curtis's comments.

Sue Hares
Merit   