[anti-abuse-wg] RIPE WHOIS blocked

In message <D2400E01-2F25-441C-BFB9-F8A40E2DB483 at ripe.net>, 
Edward Shryane <eshryane at ripe.net> wrote:

>Once this daily limit for querying personal data is reached, the IP
>address is temporarily blocked for the rest of that day. If an IP
>address repeatedly reaches its daily limit, then it is permanently
>blocked.
>
>By default when querying whois, related objects are also returned
>(including person and role objects). The '-r' flag can be used to not
>return related objects, or the '--no-personal' flag to not return person
>or role objects.

Thanks for your response.

Would you agree that _even after_ some IP address has "reached its
daily limit", that there is no real point in blocking further queries 
which _do_ use the -r option?

>For bulk access to the RIPE Database, split files (per object type) are
>published on the RIPE FTP site: ftp://ftp.ripe.net/ripe/dbase/split/

Thank you.  I didn't know about this resource and it should be most
helpful, going forward.

I'm just curious though... Where might I find brief descriptions of
what's in each of the files at the above URL?

The contents of many/most of the files in that directory are really
obvious, like ripe.db.aut-num.gz and ripe.db.inetnum.gz.  But others
are less so.  For example, what's the difference between three three:

-rw-r--r--   1 ftp      ftp         28491 Nov 18 00:26 ripe.db.as-block.gz
-rw-r--r--   1 ftp      ftp       1610549 Nov 18 00:26 ripe.db.as-set.gz
-rw-r--r--   1 ftp      ftp       7248902 Nov 18 00:26 ripe.db.aut-num.gz


Reards,
rfg


P.S.  I' sure that I will derive hours of enjoyment from the contents of
the ripe.db.poem.gz file.  So thanks for that too.  I had no idea that
RIPE members were so... um... literary.