Question on 7.0.0.0/8

Mon Apr 16 19:21:39 UTC 2007

As I am Chair of the NRO Executive Council this year, I will speak on behalf of the 5 RIRs regarding this matter.

The 5 RIRs and IANA have been engaged in discussions regarding the IPv4 file. We are working together on this. In the process we have been doing a lot of cross checking of the data in the file.

Ray

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-nanog at merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog at merit.edu] On Behalf Of
> David Conrad
> Sent: Monday, April 16, 2007 3:03 PM
> To: <michael.dillon at bt.com>
> Cc: nanog at merit.edu
> Subject: Re: Question on 7.0.0.0/8
>
>
> Michael,
>
> On Apr 15, 2007, at 2:58 PM, <michael.dillon at bt.com>
> <michael.dillon at bt.com> wrote:
> > The world moved on around them but you
> > still see things like IANA's non-parseable text file
>
> The text file is parseable -- we have empirical evidence.  Every time
> we change the format slightly, people yell at us.
>
> > At the
> > same time, IANA and the RIRs just keep doing the same old thing as
> > their
> > data and systems slowly rot away.
>
> Not really.  I can't speak to the RIRs, but IANA is working on both
> cleaning up the data in all our registries as well as coming up with
> an XML-based alternative representation for those registries.
>
> > Why doesn't IANA operate a whois server?
>
> We do.  The proper question to ask is why isn't our whois server
> populated with address information instead of just domain name
> information.  I don't know the reason historically.  However, today,
> when the topic was recently raised, concerns were expressed that IANA
> would be seen in competition with the RIRs and there are those that
> believe IANA (ICANN) should have no "operational" role whatsoever.
> With that said, IANA continues to look at adding top level (i.e., /8s
> for IPv4) block allocation information to the IANA whois server and
> this is something we're discussing with the RIRs -- I don't think
> anybody is particularly happy with the current state of affairs.
>
> > Why don't they publish a more detailled explanation field in each
> IANA
> > allocation record so that they can explain the precise status of each
> > block?
>
> What sort of additional information would be helpful?  As mentioned
> above, we're preparing an XML-based alternative representation of
> various IANA registries which would give us a lot more flexibility
> than the current text based representation.  Feel free to send mail
> privately as this might get a bit down in the weeds for NANOG.
>
> > 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?
>
> Improving the IANA registries is one of our goals.  While I can't
> speak to the RIRs, I suspect it is one of their goals as well.
>
> > And why don't they do all this with some 21st century technology?
>
> I was wondering when LDAP would show up in this discussion... :-)
>
> Rgds,
> -drc