Time to bring back "Connected Status"

Tue Apr 29 00:13:12 UTC 2003

You know, that would be a great idea except for one thing.

It's just too simple ;-)

/Alex Kiwerski

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-nanog at merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog at merit.edu]On Behalf Of
Sean Donelan
Sent: Monday, April 28, 2003 4:01 PM
To: nanog at merit.edu
Subject: Time to bring back "Connected Status"

In the beginning was the ARPANET,

When SRI and BBN handled the NIC and NOC for the Internet, there was a
field in the WHOIS database called "Connected Status."  People could
request IP networks (Class A/B/C) from SRI, but BBN would only route
networks with the Connected Status on the ARPANET. You could do Whois
queries to check the status of any network address. Companies could
request IP addresses for internal use, without connected status.

Around the time the NSFNET took over, the database sources started
diverging.  Connected Status was deleted from the WHOIS database. There
was only one WHOIS database.  NSFNET kept a seperate database of which
networks were allowed to use the NSFNET.

I know about all the routing specificiation language efforts, but is it
possible to go back and do something simple?

For networks which are announced on the Internet, add a Connected field
to the regional address registries listing the AS Number(s) which could
announce the network.  Private, internal only networks would have an
Unconnected status.