Question on 7.0.0.0/8

Mon Apr 16 18:13:19 UTC 2007

On Mon, 16 Apr 2007 michael.dillon at bt.com wrote:

>>> 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.

http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/crisp-charter.html
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4698.txt

> 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.

You need more then just transport to make an application protocol. Whois 
really does not have standardized format or querying mechanisms or security
mechanisms and that is why all this work. Underlying transport is less of
an issue and I personally was actually for LDAP when group was making a
choice between LDAP-based and XML/BEEP-based foundation.

> 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