Validating rights to announce a prefix (was: Public shaming...)

Fri Aug 15 09:39:22 UTC 2008

> To be clear: IANA and RIRs allocate or assign address space 
> today, they don't control any routing on the Internet (and 
> their own internal ASNs and IPs don't count).

And that gets to the heart of the issue that I raised. Since
the RIRs allocate ASnums and IP address blocks, they are in
a position to validate who has the right to use the numbers.
And if you want to validate who has the right to announce a
specific address prefix, you really want to start by determining
who owns the prefix, and then go to them and find out what rights
they have delegated. 

This puts the RIRs at the root of the validation chain. Although
you could attempt to build the rest of the system, without formal
validation by the RIRs, you still have holes that you can drive
a truck through. That is the experience of projects like IRR/RADB
etc.

Rather than rushing off and hacking up some code, is it possible
for a group of network operators to meet formally, in some venue
or other, and set out the requirements for such a system and the
architecture of such a system? 

--Michael Dillon