[db-wg] Draft minutes for DB-WG

Folks,

Here are the draft minutes for the DB WG meeting at Barcelona. Apologies
for the delay in posting.

Nigel
-- 
Nigel Titley <nigel at packetexchange.net>
PacketExchange Ltd
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           		Draft Minutes for RIPE 45
                       Database Working Group Meeting




A.  Administrative stuff (WW, chair)
    scribe: Nigel Titley
    Additional agenda items (none)

B.  Action Items

AP-41.9		RIPE NCC (Shane) believes that this is already done
		and that a pointer should be placed to the document.
		In addition a "Mirror Managers guide" is needed. Shane
		to complete.
AP-41.12	Remove as PKI etc is ongoing.
AP-42.1		Complete
AP-42.3		Ongoing. Revise and refine
AP-42.4		Larry has implemented this, so close action.
AP-43.1		Close. Ongoing activity. Cleanup of unreferenced persons is complete.
AP-43.6		Close. Either it has been done or it is dead.
AP-43.7		Ownership to C&W (Dave Beaumont) who are seeing some use of 
		external refs by their customers. 
AP-43.8		
AP-43.9		Housekeeping. Ongoing.
AP-44.1		New version of dbupdate now supports generated attributes.
		Deletion of key-cert objects must include the generated
		attributes. Closed.
AP-44.2		Proposal, but not yet submitted to list. Add tech-c and
		admin-c to key-cert object. Will be included soon.
AP-44.3		Ongoing. No action yet.

C.  DB operational update (RIPE NCC, Shane K.)
    including status of ERX (Early Registry Transfer)

	This presentation will probably move to the new operations forum 
	in the future.
    	Note that there are no large changes in the numbers of objects in the
    	DB since the large major cleanup. Inet6-nums are starting to appear.
    	Most updates still come via email. Synchronous updates now amount
    	to about 9%. Majority of queries are still IP addresses, followed
    	by domain referrals. Note to CCTLD managers to try and use the client
    	information that a deferred query includes, to prevent data mining.
    
	Tertiary server planned to defend against DDoS and massive
	failure.

	Unreferenced person cleanup will take place starting 29th May. 
	Objects unused for 90 days get deleted. Email sent out at 60 days. 
	Restricting this to 2000 per day to prevent alarm and despondency
	by deleted persons.

	IPv6 proxy service is live and being integrated in with the
	other production servers. Queries are only being received from 7 
	unique query addresses so the service is not being widely used.

	ERX update. 4 /8s have been transferred. One more trial and then
	full transfer will take place.

	Prototype RPSLng server in now on-line. Includes IPv6 and
	multicast objects. Still a draft standard so the software is 
	liable to change. IRRToolSet changes are being worked on.

	A draft plan to update the status attribute will be published
	soon. 

	[AP-45.1 All] Start thinking about what changes may be
	required in their software to interact with the changes in 
	the status attribute.

	Proposals for X509 support for the database and lir-portal will
	shortly be published on the list.

	[AP-45.1 RIPE NCC] Add Maintainer contact to the ERX mail exchange

	A question about RIPE-CC being authoritative secondary DNS
	server for transferred class Bs. Why? Actually, after the
	transfer this is not required, but if the record is updated,
	Marvin insists on the RIPE-NCC being added as a secondary. There is
	no proposal to change this yet. This should possibly be raised 
	in the DNS working group discussion on lameness.

D.  Quality of contact data (RIPE NCC, Shane K.)

	The main goal of the project is to measure the quality of the
	data in the database prior to any attempts to "fix" it.

	Names, postal addresses, phone numbers are all difficult to check.
	Email is possible, but not mandatory in the person object.
	However a check has been run on those available. 80% were ok,
	the rest were defective in some way. Some of the 80% may fail
	even so. Applying this to real IP addresses gives about 12%
	with no valid email address, partly because the email attribute
	is optional in the person object.
	It was noted that the email attribute is mandatory in both
	the APNIC and ARIN regions. Possibly the RIPE region should be
	the same. It was noted that there is probably no one who cannot
	obtain an email address during the "bootstrap" phase. 

	WW suggested that email "reachability" should be determined
	by actually sending an email to the contact address.

	Leo Vegoda, RIPE NCC, asked whether the "changed" attribute
	should be revised in some way. 

	It was suggested that the authentication mechanism and date used to
	modify an object is recorded and the "freshness" of the object be used
	to indicate how likely the contact data is to be accurate.

	Should the database quality project be moved to the LIR WG, or
	should it remain in the DB WG? Concensus was that at least the
	technical aspects should remain with this group.

E.  New "dbupdate" (RIPE NCC, Denis W.)

	DBupdate is the front end processor for updating objects in the
	DB. It has been modified as a result of feedback by users who
	wanted more error reporting, particularly on authorisation. 
	Generated attributes are overwritten if necessary and the user
	warned. Plug in code facilities have been added.

	From a user's point of view the main change is the improved quality of
	responses and the acceptance of MIME encoding.

	Nested Authentication both PGP and PGP/Password are now
	accepted which allows the creation of route objects with proper
	authentication (for details see presentation).
	Detailed authorisation information is returned for each object.

	Error handling is vastly improved, and an error message should
	be returned in all cases. Acknowledgement messages should be
	easier to parse with scripts as responses to individual multiple
	objects in the original message are seperated by '---'.

	Note that unrecognised keywords in the subject line will cause
	warning messages.

	Testing is done using approximately 500 test updates. The full
	test will be run after *every* change.

	Documentation is being written and will be released over the next
	few weeks, including a full set of error messages.
		
F.  DB-SW teams up with... (UniVie-ACOnet, Ulrich K.)
    The UniVie Netw.Info.Sys

	This presentation describes how the RIPE DB has been used to
	document the Vienna University network.

	Some minor changes to the DB code were required, but nothing
	significant.

	[AP45.3 RIPE NCC] To expose their development process more
	publically to allow code to be made available with more
	dispatch.

G.  Discussion: to disallow auth: NONE

	Should auth: NONE be deprecated, or should the user who wishes
	to use no authentication be allowed to do so?

	A document has been sent out, on the list, describing the various 
	issues. 

	Note that database copies dating back for 1 year are
	kept, and so damaged objects can always be restored.

	There are some situations where auth: NONE is valid.

	It might be possible to send a warning back when an object
	that is protected by auth: NONE is modified.

	[AP-45.4 All] To comment on auth: NONE on the DB WG mailing list.
	

H.  Follow-Up on last meetings issues (Chair, WW144)            30 min
    Organisation object proposal (RIPE NCC, Shane K.)

	This is a long standing proposal which has got nowhere fast.

	There has been some resistance in the past, but there have been
	several expressions of interest in this object recently, and there 
	seems no reason not to go ahead with this now (although some
	reservations were expressed about the hierachical nature of the
	object, and the possible changes required when an organisation
	undergoes corporate metamorphosis.

	[AP-45.5 RIPE NCC] To document proposal and re-circulate on mailing
	list.
	[AP-45.6 RIPE NCC] To collate responses and make a start on
	implementation.

    . status: SUB-ALLOCATED PA (Space.Net, Gert D.)

	This is going ahead anyway.

    . reclaim: - Attribute (Space.Net, Gert D.)

	This is also going ahead.

    . allowing "generated" attributes in updates (WW et.al.)

	Complete

    . Key Certificates to person: role: ?

	This is going ahead, and a proposal has been received.

Y.  Input from other WGs
        
	WW has not received anything from other WGs, neither has
	anyone else.


Z.  AOB:

	Restructuring of WGs.

		There are a number of proposals for re-organisation. There
		will be some effects on the charter of this group.

		[AP-45.7 All] To think about potential interactions with
		other WGs and consider who this will affect our charter.

	Private objects?

		Do we have any idea of organisations who are adding their
		own objects to their databases, and is there a means of
		documenting and registering such practices?

		[AP-45.8 Dave Beaumont] To email WW to let him know what
		sort of changes they have made, and to remind him to kick
		off discussion on the mailing list.
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