[address-policy-wg] IPv4 Maintenance Policy

Dear Hank,

On 4/20/12 12:42 PM, Hank Nussbacher wrote:
> At 02:42 PM 4/19/2012 +0000, Milton L Mueller wrote:
>
>> This aspect of the policy regarding legacy holders needs clarification:
>>
>> "Leave data as it is in the RIPE Registry. The Legacy Resource Holder 
>> will not be able to add to or alter their data and will not have 
>> access to any RIPE NCC services such as reverse delegation and 
>> certification."
>>
>> It is likely that in response to this policy legacy holders will 
>> choose to use an alternate registrar for the services you are 
>> precluding them from using (e.g., reverse delegation and 
>> certification). In that case RIPE NCC will need to negotiate an 
>> interoperability or interconnection agreement with these service 
>> alternate providers to ensure that a globally applicable unique 
>> registration occurs.
>>
>> If RIPE NCC is not willing to do that, it appears to be attempting to 
>> leverage its monopoly to force legacy holders into purchase and use 
>> of their services, something that raises obvious competition policy 
>> issues. I wouldn't advise you to do down that path.
>
> The problem is not so much the whois database but rather the delegated 
> file which is the more "official" data for all RIRs:
> ftp://ftp.ripe.net/pub/stats/ripencc/delegated-ripencc-latest
>
> When ARIN and RIPE did their ERX thing in 2003, ARIN mistakenly 
> transferred 4600+ IP blocks to RIPE with country=EU rather than 
> country=xx. 

The ERX project was a database project. Its aim was ensuring that ranges 
were listed in the correct RIR database.
IP blocks were transferred from the ARIN database to the RIPE Database 
with the country code listed in the inetnum objects at time of the transfer.

All legacy resources transferred to the RIPE NCC, that are not 
associated with any LIR and part of the RIPE Registry, are registered 
under a placeholder 'eu.zz-transfer'. EU is the country code used when 
there is no specific country associated with the resources in the RIPE 
Registry. This results in the EU country code in the delegated stats 
file (not in the RIPE Database).

> There are numerous software packages that use the delegated data to do 
> geolocation.  Examples:
> http://code.google.com/p/ci-geoip/
> http://16bytes.com/geo_locating-html/
> https://metacpan.org/module/IP::Country::DB_File::Builder
> http://www.codecodex.com/wiki/IP_Address_to_Country
> So your IP block would not say your country code but rather EU.   
> There is one commercial firewall that uses the delegated data 
> incorrectly as well and hides the details behind something more 
> powerful than a firewall - a lawyerwall.
>

The delegated stats file was never intended to be used for geo-location 
information:
ftp://ftp.ripe.net/pub/stats/ripencc/_README
However as you mentioned, different organisations are using it for this 
purpose.

> RIPE NCC is unwilling to fix this, unless one submits the legacy IP 
> space to be listed under a LIR.
>

You can register the legacy resources you are the legitimate holder of, 
to your LIR. These resources would then get the country code of that 
LIR. This is however by no means enforced...

Creating fake LIRs and/or temporarily move resources to an LIR without a 
contract in place are no options. These are quick "fixes" that will just 
do harm on the medium term. For this reason we are currently working on 
improving the delegated and the delegated extended stats files: they 
will use a different data-set and show the country codes relative to the 
single resource. The country code will be taken form the RIPE Database. 
This will be released in the near future.

Best regards,

Andrea Cima
RIPE NCC


> -Hank
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