[ncc-services-wg] IP geolocation services

Hi Peter!

Peter Koch wrote:
> Wilfried,
> 
> 
>>particular end-system using a particualr address, at a particular point in
>>time, from a block registered in a particular RIR's DB as an assignment is
>>very bad idea to begin with.
>>
>>At least for the RIPE-DB, there are no agreed or definend semantics for
>>the interpretation of the country: attribute. The data is a hint, at best.
> 
> 
> agreed, but the problem in question is not necessarily related to the
> RIPE DB being used as source of the geolocation information.  What seems
> to be desirable is some notification of changes when a certain address
> block is unassigned or, more importantly, reassigned.

Well, we actually do have that mechanism in place: the registry database.
It offers a granularity of (legacy, plus) allocations to LIRs and the
assignments from within the PA blocks. In principle, this data should be
reasonably accurate and should be maintained regularly. I presume at least
the allocations, being maintained by the RIR should be pretty reliable?

>From within the blocks, that's a different story maybe...
But it should remain a scan and pull-technology by those who want to read
and consume the data. I am not convinced that a notification service for
everyone and her dog would be scalable?

>  This doesn't
> have to provide the new location information, but should initiate a new
> run of the location magic for this address range, so the GeoLoc provider
> knows when to update/refresh which information.

For some situations this could be a couple of times per hour, for mobile
devices ;-) Other than that I'd suggest a frequency of once per day to
pick up the new information.

> Of course, we know similar demands from the domain business and these
> requests aren't all free of concern, but the situation might be different
> here in the addressing world.

Yep, I think the discussion is useful, at least to start to understand what
the expectations, the reality and the boundary conditions are!

I always get back to see that resource distribution for the IP-world, for the
Internet was never taking (volatile) national boundaries into account, neither
on the administrative nor on the operational level.

Maybe the parties trying to use geo-location to control access to information
and (licensed) services should also start to accept that fact for their
business model?

> -Peter

Wilfried.