telnet interface

On Wed, 19 Apr 1995 16:59:34 -0400  "Dale S. Johnson" wrote:
>   Today's discussion of the IRR on nanog has had a couple of references to
> a telnet interface to the RIPE database.
> 
>   Is there code for this in the distribution?  Any hints on how you set
> it up?  (Is it in docs anywhere?)

There is a telnet interface for database lookups (telnet to info.ripe.net);
you probably don't want the code (info.ripe.net is planned to be rebuilt
for more than a year now, but time is lacking).

There is no telnet interface for updates. There are a couple of reasons
I can think of why a telnet interface is not a good idea:
1. The email interface is generally found sufficient, because a response
   (positive or negative) is received within minutes (max), essentially
   limited by the speed two email messages are sent/received
   (people that have connectivity bad enough for mail to take more than
   a minute probably do not want interactive telnet...)
2. Telnet has no authentication mechanism. Somehow I feel that some kind
   of 'login' authentication isn't a good idea.
3. Email has an easy way to log transactions. logging telnet is much
   more difficult...
4. I can't think of an easy way to authenticate new objects. cut/paste
   of PGP signatures looks painful to me. Email headers are useless;
   people apperently aren't too fond of password authentication.

Am I missing something?

Geert Jan




-------- Logged at  Thu Apr 20 03:17:09 MET DST 1995  ---------