Question on 7.0.0.0/8

Mon Apr 16 13:28:31 UTC 2007

On 16-apr-2007, at 14:30, <michael.dillon at bt.com>  
<michael.dillon at bt.com> wrote:

>> Whois, LDAP and other stuff like that only makes things worse
>> because this requires you to walk through the data rather than  
>> have it
>> available in a nice, easy to handle text file.

> Yes, let's not get carried away. The data is already available in a
> nice, easy to handle text file for those that simply want to look at a
> simple listing. But for those who NEED to parse it with automated
> systems and who NEED to know when things have changed, an IANA whois
> server is a better solution.

No, it's not. My scripts currently retrieve the file, compare what's  
in there with what's in the database and complain when there is a  
difference. All simple enough. The only problem is that I need a  
bunch of special case logic and have to check up manually to make  
sure that everything is categorized correctly.

With whois, I'd need to do 256 lookups, and I'd probably have to  
implement the whois protocol myself (ok, trivial, but still) because  
I can't just use one of the 3 million HTTP utils/libraries.