[db-wg] proposal: new attribute 'geofeed:'

On Wed, Oct 07, 2020 at 06:31:11AM +0000, Lutz Donnerhacke via db-wg wrote:
> > By enriching the RPSL dictionary and having a “geofeed” RPSL attribute
> > (which by the way should not be mandatory) 

Indeed, it is not mandatory.

> > will be easier for someone to extend his parser to use that field
> > without overloading the parser with many “if” and regex expressions.
> > Plus the upcoming RFC specifies A that "The format MUST be as in
> > this example,“ so a verification needs to be applied later on.
> 
> I second this.
> 
> > Of course it’s weird to talk about enriching RPSL on 2020 but putting
> > this apart, I believe it’s more correct to implement it in this way.
> 
> If nobody ever adapts RPSL to the new requirements, RPSL is dead.
> So the question is: Should we throw away the RRDB in favour of something else,
> or do we extend RPSL in the way it was designed?

Given that the implementation cost of adding a 'geofeed:' attribute in
WHOIS servers is almost negligible, and it merely is a pointer to a the
'geofeed' data file in a format which can be used in different contexts
(perhaps linked from peeringdb, perhaps referenced from RPKI objects),
it seems a durable investment regardless of RPSL's future.

Kind regards,

Job