[db-wg] Policies and Guidelines for Assignments for Network Infrastructure and End User Networks

Hello WG (both, actually),

A recent case of a Russian broadband ISP, roughly 6th in size in the
country, exposing the personal data of their individual VIP customers
by posting said data to RIPE DB(*) highlighted an important issue in
RIPE-708, 6.2 "[policies and guidelines for assignments for] Network
Infrastructure and End User Networks"(**).

To quote:

> IP addresses used solely for the connection of an End User to a service provider (e.g. point-to-point links) are considered part of the service provider's infrastructure. These addresses do not have to be registered with the End User's contact details but can be registered as part of the service provider's internal infrastructure.

> When an End User has a network using public address space this _must_ be registered separately with the contact details of the End User. Where the End User is an individual rather than an organisation, the contact information of the service provider may be substituted for the End Users.

(note the "must", we'll soon get back to it)

While it's out of question that posting individual users' personal
data to RIPE DB is insane, what's interesting is that small business
owners(***), when aware of the leak, seem to also be concerned that
their B2B broadband data contract apparently included a clause they've
missed, and their mobile telephone number is now published to a public
database on the Internet, and, you know, one cannot simply remove an
information from the Internet which is already there.

But when we try to rely on 6.2 for a definitive advice, we don't get any:

- There's no definition of what is exactly meant under "point-to-point
links" (PTPL). Some speculate it's a historical term from the times of
PPP/SLIP, meaning just "end-user access links", and, as such, includes
individual and SMB customer links. Other read it as those IPv4 /30s
ASes waste all the time for BGP session establishment, and argue that
what's really meant by PTPL is just the IP addresses never ever
communicating with the world outside of their own local net (BGP
sessions included, SMB access obviously not included).

(Personally, the second opinion looks more convincing for me, because
this way only those IP addresses which never send or receive packets
from the Internet may lack a proper abuse-c, which makes sense, and I
like when things make sense, so. But at the same time the first
opinion is backed by people I respect.) Anyway, RIPE-708 fails to
provide an answer.

- Another scary term is "a network using public address space"
(NUPAS). Is IPv4 /32 a network? What about /31? What's "using public
address space" after all, there's no doubt we won't report our usage
of 192.168.0.0/16 to RIPE DB. This sentence was meant to clear our
concerns but it just adds up to them.

What is also meant to help us but adds to the mess is the RIPE NCC
Local Internet Registry Training Course(****), slides 94-95:

- Somehow, training material includes more specific definitions and
corner cases (e.g. "points of presence") than the policy does. Is it
only me, or such a thing should never ever happen? A policy training
course must not be different from the policy itself, no matter if the
difference is in being either more strict of more relaxed. If an NCC
trainer just knows more about the subject than is stated in a policy,
they'd better report to the WG first that the policy lacks an
important consideration.

- However, those definitions don't really clarify what's PTPL and
NUPAS are, too.

- Slide 95 is even better: it says there's a grey area around. Well,
it might be again only me, but personally I feel very uncomfortable
seeing "must" and "grey area" in the same sentence. If there's a grey
area in an area, it must be "should" there, not "must".

- There's apparently a border line between "when the End User has a
few addresses out of a larger address block" and "If the End User has
a separate subnet". Now again, (an occasional?) /31 is a subnet or
just a few addresses? Who's going to check ISPs against this strict
("must") requirement, and how?

- What if there's a customer with an pizza store (so, an office within
their location) and their own equipment (Mikrotik) connected to a
broadband pool?

- What if a broadband customer sets up an HTTP server on their
point-to-point link's public v4 address and starts serving whatever
children drug suicide abuse torrents they have.

All in all, RIPE-708 6.2 is a perfect example of an imperfect policy,
too strict and too vague at the same time. Which is bad, because a)
some ISPs would just prefer to ignore it, no matter the "must", and
would be paying less attention to other "musts" they would encounter
in other policy documents, b) those ISPs who would choose to be
responsible about RIPE DB usage risk losing customers and wouldn't be
able to defend their attitude against the customers, let alone courts,
based on the RIPE DB policy.

So here are two separate things I propose, and I'd prefer them to be
discussed and evaluated separately:

1) Ask the author of LIR training material to provide the WG (both)
with the historical insight on what was meant in 6.2, and how's that
supposed to work. Afterwards, after a heated discussion on the mailing
list (both), make a decision and amend a policy towards either a more
relaxed, or a more constraining fashion, but do either of things
anyway, as there's no SLIP anymore, and such an irresponsible wording
of a policy as it stands today undermines the trust in policy process,
especially in some Eastern European and Northeast countries where
there's hardly any trust even now.

My personal suggestion is that the only border line that should be
there is between businesses/organizations with public IP addresses, on
one side, and individual users/NAT pools, on the other. If a company
is using a public IP address space for any purpose at all, it must
publish at least an abuse-c contact to a public IP database. Fair
enough IMO.

2) Change 6.2 to reflect the fact that the contact information of End
Users who are individuals not MAY, but rather MUST be substituted with
the contact data of the service provider. This perfectly reflects
currently ongoing legislation trends as well as a concern in the
society at large, and also would be seen as a responsible attitude of
an ISP community towards the personal data safety — an attitude the
ISP community hardly used to show before.

(*) — https://www.bbc.com/russian/news-46083410. Here's a Google
Translate link for your convenience:
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ru&tl=en&js=n&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.com%2Frussian%2Fnews-46083410

(**) — https://www.ripe.net/publications/docs/ripe-708#62

(***) — My definition of a "small business" here might seem too broad,
but if's fully grounded: e.g. Main Directorate for Drugs Control of
the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, as a business, is
definitely not so big; Alfa Bank is a large bank in Russia but Russian
banking system is comparatively small when compared to the rest of the
world; etc.

(****) — https://www.ripe.net/support/training/material/lir-training-course/lir-slides.pdf

| Töma Gavrichenkov
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