IP Management Tool - Minimum Requirements

Hi,

Following a presentation of an IP Management Tool by Guy Vegoda at the
last RIPE Meeting Tools BOF, interest was expressed in the development
of an Open Source version of such a tool and I agreed to use the lirwg
list to try and draw up Requirements for this. Hopefully this can be
refined into something that we can then begin writing Specifications
for.

Please remember that these are *Requirements* - i.e. what the users
want the tool to do. Please confine remarks to this area and avoid
mixing in the *Specifications* - i.e. how those requirements will be
met - which we will come to, in good time.

It should also be emphasised that we would at this stage like to
concentrate on _minimum_ requirements for a simple tool, such that it
would be useful to a large number of LIRs. I think we can use these
Minimum Requirements to produce something that may or may not include
more advanced features as well, knowing that we would at least have
covered the basic needs.

Comments on this process and the document are most welcome, and
we would also like a good name.

Thanks to Guy Vegoda, Leo Vegoda and Nigel Titley for their help in
drawing up this document, and especially to Guy for presenting his
tool.

Cheers,

Maldwyn Morris
Software Manager
RIPE NCC

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Minimum Requirements for an IP Management Tool
----------------------------------------------

0. Introduction

Guy Vegoda presented an IP Management Tool at the Tools BOF at RIPE 38
[1]. This document is an attempt to specify the minimum requirements
for a similar tool, with the aim of producing an Open Source version
for anyone who wants to use it.

Below, I address 1. General Points about the project, 2. The
Requirements themselves, 3. External Constraint that must be
considered, and 4. A list of References.


1. General Points

Name:

Let's use IPMT ( IP Management Tool ) as a placeholder for now.

Users:

We will target as users 'The Hostmaster staff of Local Internet
Registries which are Customers of the RIPE NCC and who need to manage
their IP Allocations and Assignments and the requests for same that
they send to the RIPE NCC' [phew].  We will call one of these people a
'LIRHostmaster' and their organisation an 'LIR'.  It may also be
useful to other people in other organisations to do other things, but
that will not influence the requirements.

Open Source:

We will release this software under the LGPL licence [2]. 
We use this instead of GPL [3] because this means we will remain able
to using non-GPL'ed libraries, should that prove necessary.

The RIPE NCC is happy to support this project, but of course its Open
Source nature means anyone else can use the code to begin their own
Open Source project.  We are also happy about that.

IPV6:

We would be foolish not to consider the possibility of using this tool
for managing IPV6 addresses and writing it such that this is possible,
but we think it will be useful even if it does not and do not consider
IPV6 support a requirement.


2. Requirements

General functionality:

IPMT should provide the LIRHostmasters with list, create, update, and
delete access to information regarding their LIR's IPV4 allocations.
These actions must be undoable where necessary.
Basic validity checks will be performed on all input.

IPMT should provide the LIRHostmasters with list, create, update, and
delete access to information regarding their LIR's IPV4 assignments.
These actions must be undoable where necessary.
Basic validity checks will be performed on all input.

IPMT should allow the LIRHostmasters to receive requests for IPV4
assignments from the customers of their LIR and allow them to process
them.

IPMT should allow LIRHostmasters to send well-formatted email requests
for new IPv4 assignments to the RIPE NCC and allow the LIRHostmasters
to receive and process responses from the RIPE NCC.

IPMT should allow LIRHostmasters to send well-formatted email requests
for new IPv4 allocations to the RIPE NCC and allow the LIRHostmasters
to receive and process responses from the RIPE NCC.

User Interface:

LIRHostmasters should be able to conveniently access IPMT functions
from a wide range of Desktop Operating Systems, possibly including
non-modern, non-Unix-like ones. A GUI interface is the minimal
acceptable convenience level.

A less-convenient interface to IPMT for more complex functions and
administration is acceptable.


3. External constraints

The RIPE NCC only accepts requests for new IPv4 Assignments and
Allocations via email to hostmaster at ripe.net and replies only via
email [4].

IPV4 Assignment requests must be in RIPE 141 format [5].
Requests for new IPV4 Allocations have no special format.

LIRHostmasters handle customer requests for Assignments via telephone,
email and web pages.

IPMT must have access to the RIPE DB [6] or a local mirror thereof.


4. References

[1] http://www/ripe/meetings/archive/ripe-38/index.html
[2] http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/lesser.html
[3] http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
[4] http://www.ripe.net/ripencc/mem-services/registration/status.html
[5] http://www.ripe.net/ripe/docs/ripe-141.html
[6] http://www.ripe.net/ripencc/pub-services/db/