misleading use of the connect: field in inetnum: object

  > "Wilfried Woeber, UniVie/ACOnet" <woeber at cc.univie.ac.at> writes:
  > I had one and only one basic concern: when we put info into the DB,
  > 		   this info should HELP and not CONFUSE.

Fully agree.  That is hard to do with the current connect field. 

  > So now I've got another concern: populating the RR helps the "afficionados"
  > ,
  > but probably doesn't help the (end-)user in finding out what he/she can
  > expect. I'd assume people are still thinking in terms of NORDUnet, NSF, RIP
  > E
  > and not in terms of ASxxx and ASyyy.  

Of course you can look up what ASxxx and ASyyy are in the very same
database.  And find NORDUnet, ACOnet etc.  Maybe we should include that
info in the recursive lookup information?  It can only be one AS per net
so it will not be too bad. 

In the future we will provide tools (PRIDE project) which can actually
answer the question "Is there supposed to be connectivity from here to
there?" which is the question you are concerned about. 

The crucial point for these tools to be able to work is a well populated
routing registry.  That is why I would like to spend efforts on this
rather than on fixing old kludges.  In the long run (and even in the
short run) this will be much more useful. 

  > And the basic issue remains - you can
  > just as well put some string into the "as-*:" fields and still have only
  > EARN-E-Mail connectivity...

No you can't because that is a guarded field and maintained by the
service provider represented by that AS. It is not maintained by the
people maintaining the network entry. If they have no service provider 
they will have no information there.  VERY different from connect. 

  > Definitely!
  > And thanks for spending some minutes on it.

My pleasure and my job! 

Daniel