[db-wg] NWI-10 Definition of Country

Hi Denis,

What you name it as "meaningless values" are not meaningless to the
organizations that they are using it.

When you request a new allocation from NCC you will be asked to *"specify
the country which the allocation will be announced"*, and based on your
selection the country code will be set for both the inet(6)numns and
allocation entry in the delegation file. This is the way that the country
code is added in first place in delegation file.

A member may decides to use the allocation later in a different country,
and they can update the country code for inet(6)numns in ripe db, so I
think the best practice is to sync the delegation file with the database
and let the members decide what value should be set.

Regards,

Arash Naderpour




On Fri, Nov 1, 2019 at 11:50 PM denis walker <dw100uk at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> Hi Arash
>
> If many organisations are using these values then, unfortunately, you are
> basing decisions on meaningless values.
>
> The country attribute in resource objects is undefined. Users can set this
> to any country they wish with no meaning to anyone reading the value from
> the database.
>
> From the description of the extended delegated stats file
> ftp://ftp.ripe.net/ripe/stats/RIR-Statistics-Exchange-Format.txt
>
> it says this about the country code:
>
> Format:
>
>          registry|cc|type|start|value|date|status[|extensions...]
>
>     registry  = One value from the set of defined strings:
>
>                         {apnic,arin,iana,lacnic,ripencc};
>
>     cc        = ISO 3166 2-letter country code, and the enumerated
>                 variances of
>
>                         {AP,EU,UK}
>
>                 These values are not defined in ISO 3166 but are widely used.
>
>                 The cc value identifies the country. However, it is not specified
>                 if this is the country where the addresses are used.
>                 There are no rules defined for this value.
>                 It therefore cannot be used in any reliable way to map IP addresses
>                 to countries
>
> If you were to sync the stats file with resource object data you are in
> effect setting an undefined field in the stats to an undefined value from
> the database.
>
> The purpose of NWI-10 is to create a well defined country value in both
> the stats file and the ORGANISATION object. The legal location of an
> organisation is currently the only well defined country information
> available. There is no information available anywhere in the database or
> stats file telling you where a network is being used.
>
> cheers
> denis
>
> co-chair DB-WG
>
> On Friday, 1 November 2019, 05:37:28 CET, Arash Naderpour via db-wg <
> db-wg at ripe.net> wrote:
>
>
> Hi,
>
> I'm new to DB-WG, but want to express my opinion in this regard,
> from problem definition:
> "Historically the country code was used to refer to the location of the
> network"
>
> There are plenty of organization out there that are already set their
> network and firewalls rules to use country code value in delegation file as
> reference to the location of the network.
>
> Changing the rule to to something new, will cause problem for clients and
> providers, so I don't think it is a good idea,
> country code in delegation file can be synced with the country code for
> resource object in RIPE DB.
> A new attribute in organization object refers to where the resource holder
> is legally based is totally fine, but having the same value in delegation
> file can break networks and services.
>
> Regards,
>
> Arash Naderpour
> Parsun Network Solutions
>
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