Question on 7.0.0.0/8

Mon Apr 16 10:51:40 UTC 2007

> > Why doesn't IANA and the RIRs collectively get off their butts and
> > actually make an "authoritative IP address allocation 
> directory" one of
> > their goals?
> > And why don't they do all this with some 21st century technology?
> 
> A new system based on IRIS protocol (XML based using BEEP as 
> transport) 
> will be in place in the future that will work better as a 
> comprehensive 
> directory.

I have heard of no such plans. As far as I know, IRIS was designed for
domain name registry whois data which is entirely a separate issue from
IP address whois data. Also, I do not consider a complex XML-based
protocol to be 21st century technology. In the 20th century, when you
wanted to do something on the net you invented a new protocol and hacked
together some application.

In the 21st century, you look at what is available on the shelf and
widely in use on the net and adopt that. Most often this turns out to be
a RESTful API that doesn't even need XML, although something like
XML-RPC still fits the bill. I still wonder why the widely used LDAP
protocol can't be adopted for whois lookups since it is used everywhere
in the corporate world. The answer seems to be Not-Invented-Here or
"we're netheads and LDAP smells of bellheads", both of which are
ridiculous arguments in the today's world.

--Michael Dillon