RWHOIS, SWIP, and proving ownership

Thu Nov 21 17:08:22 UTC 1996

> Consider this a side note to the preceding discussion.
> 
> 1. Most of our clients understand that their ''lease'' on network address
>    space is at our whim, by contract for IP connectivity, and is subject
>    to renumbering if WE assign them new space, if WE are assigned new space,
>    or if they move elsewhere.  
> 
>    Therefore they don't ask us to SWIP the nets nor do they care.  
> 
So...

> 2. RWHOIS doesn't run on any production operating system.  I know Unix is
>    in vogue, but since we do the 99.96% uptime schtick, we use operating
>    systems that stay up (VMS).  This means we can't run RWHOIS (even if we
>    did want to, which if you read #1 above you'll see we don't.)
> 
I don't see any reason you couldn't modify RWHOIS to compile/run on
VMS.  It's pretty straightforward C code with very few UNIX specific
calls in it.  Admittedly, we run UNIX (which has been up 99.96%+ at
our site).  In fact, the last time I worked in a shop with a bunch
of VMS users, the VMS system was down alot more often than our UNIX
systems.

Oh well... Guess it's religion.

> 3. We currently use almost all of a /18, two thirds of a /19, a few /22s,
>    and some /24s.  It would be easy to justify a /17 based on all this, but
>    if someone wanted to be rigid about RWHOIS and SWIP, even a bunch of 
>    traceroutes aren't going to convince them.
> 
> Back in THE GOOD OLD DAYS (tm), we said "Be flexible with what you accept,
> be rigid with what you send out."  (Others made it sound better and put it
> in RFCs... D.C. for one.. :)
> 
That applies to network protocols and interactions between machines.

> Nowadays I see the motto has become "Be rigid in what you accept, and modify
> your templates as often as possible."  This criticism applies equally to the
> RA IRR as it does to the InterNIC.
> 
I will support this criticism of the NIC, but the RA has not refused any of
my submissions based on templates over a year old.

> Gee, and this started out as one sentence that went "We don't run RWHOIS, our
> clients don't want it, our operating system won't support it, and you better
> listen when we ask for a /17 ;)"
> 
We don't conform to any standard, we don't care what the rest of the net does,
and you better give us what we want when we want it.  Cute.  I expected better
from you of all people, Ehud.

> Ehud
> 
Owen