[ripe-db-requirements-tf] IRT Query Statistics

Hi all,

Here are some statistics on IRT queries for January. How much usage do these IRT objects get?

Some background reading on IRT objects:
https://www.ripe.net/manage-ips-and-asns/db/irt
https://www.ripe.net/manage-ips-and-asns/db/support/documentation/ripe-database-documentation/rpsl-object-types/4-3-descriptions-of-secondary-objects/4-3-2-description-of-the-irt-object

The IRT object is meant to be used by Incident Response Teams directly, and "abuse-c:" is meant for general abuse complaints.

IRT objects are *not* returned by default in Whois queries. Users must either specify the -c / --irt flag on an IP lookup, or specify the IRT-* primary key.

There are about 400 IRT objects in the Whois database. To reference an IRT object from an IP range, you must add an "mnt-irt" attribute (and authenticate with the IRT object). I found 12,694 references to IRT objects from inetnums, and 901 references from inet6nums. A total of 174 distinct IRT objects are referenced (leaving 226 unreferenced).

Out of 2 billion Whois queries in January, I found 204,318 queries with the irt flag (or ~7k/day), and 546 queries (or about 18/day) for an IRT object using the primary key.

Let me know if you have any questions or would like more details.

Regards
Ed Shryane
RIPE NCC