Interesting object in the RIPE database

Hi,


On Fri, 9 Jul 1999, Steven Bakker wrote:

> >>>>> On Wed, 7 Jul 1999, "RLE" == Robert_Martin-Leg=E8ne wrote:
> And besides, classful addressing is a Thing of the Past (ahem).  The BSD
> way of doing it is clever, but complicated and it has no place in the DB,
> IMO.  I always understood that the DB software would pad missing octets at
> the end of an IP address, no ambiguity there.

Yes.

> 
> What I'm surprised about is that the DB apparently allows someone to
> register address space that's most likely not even theirs...
> 

The DB is just a program, not a person. The concept of reasonable is alien
to it.

> Of course, once it gets allocated and entered into the DB, a conflict will 
> be detected and flagged (right!?), but until then, the error will go 
> undetected.  Is this a feature?

When someone submits an update for an IP range greater than a /19, the
object is accepted but the acknowledgment mail has a WARNING message
asking the user whether this is actually what they intended.

A /19 is the (current) maximum assignement window anyone can get from the
NCC but
there are other parts of the address space (eg. "old" class Bs and A) that
people want to register at the RIPE DB because they are in Europe and
other registries have different policies.

We could add code for specific rules for different parts of the IP
space, like:
don't allow things bigger than /19 for space that was given to the NCC by
the IANA, but do so for the rest of the space. And then change the code
when the policies change.

Right now this would be rather messy because it would interact with the
hierarchical authorization (a part that definitely needs a full rework in
the next DB).

Also, I feel this kind of thing usually ends up being a bit "ugly" (from
a technical point of view).
>From a non-technical point of view, this also touches the old common
admited practice that the DB was there for people to register whatever
they wanted, whether reasonable or not (something I've never quite agreed
with).

As you said, when someone introduces a mistake like this it affects other
people but it is also flagged pretty fast.

Opinions about what people feel is reasonable are most welcome.

Greetings,
Joao

> 
> Cheers,
> Steven
> 
> 
>