NIC Handles

Friends,

after all the useful input from you and some more thought we have
concluded that introducing the RIPE handles this year is too ambitious. 

So it will be January. 

I see two alternatives:

1) We wait until the RIPE meeting in order to discuss all the
possibilities and make a firm decision.  This delays introduction well
into February.  Database exchange with the InterNIC is also delayed
until then. 

2) We introduce like planned in the first week(s) of January.  In order
to address concerns quick and easy assignment we will operate a server
for real-time assignments.  If this does not solve the expected problems
we can decide about local assignements at the RIPE meeting. 

In order not to delay database exchange with the NIC we favour option 2.

About the real-time server: It will run on a special TCP port accessible
only to local IRs.  The server will accept a person object with
"nic-hdl: assign" and immediately echo back the person object with the
NIC handle or an error message.  We will provide a filter "assignhandle"
to go with it so you can integrate it into your own software (we will
often run it in vi/emacs). 

We will also provide the filter mentioned in the paper which adds
handles to an existing database without handles. 

Does anyone have real problems with option 2?

Daniel