Follow up to previous post regarding SAAVIS

Thu Aug 13 01:16:38 UTC 2009

On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 07:37:00PM -0500, Frank Bulk wrote:
> Perhaps this is a stupid question, but does each SP need to run their own
> physical RR?  Isn't this something that could be hosted?

The data itself is stored on a distributed network of databases, so 
there is technically no reason any SP needs to run their own. However, 
they often do, because when a customer can't figure something out it 
gives them access to go in and tweak the customers' records for them. 

Unfortunately the distributed nature of the databases is one of the 
biggest problems with the IRR system. Anyone can run an irrd, there is 
no inherient authentication of the data. In order to get your irrd 
"recognized" all you have to do is get mirrored by a database that other 
people query and boom you're in the system. What tends to happen is 
someone puts a route into a database and then completely forgets about 
it, so there are a huge number of completely bogus routes out there 
which are never going to get cleaned up.

The other problem is that when a SP has a customer who "can't figure it 
out", a typical course of action is to just "register the route for 
them" rather than try to explain it to them. Unfortunately, the same 
thing as above happens here, you end up with a big pile of people who 
register a big pile of routes in a big pile of random databases, often 
times completely unnecessarily, and they'll never be removed either.

The biggest problem with the entire system is the way that data gets 
into it, and the lack of incentive for people to ever remove data from 
it. But as a mechanism to allow the routes which need to be allowed, and 
mostly prevent accidental leaks, it works.

For more information, take a look at:

http://www.nanog.org/meetings/nanog44/presentations/Tuesday/RAS_irrdata_N44.pdf

-- 
Richard A Steenbergen <ras at e-gerbil.net>       http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras
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