Using the NIC for IRR contact lists

Bill,

> From bmanning at ISI.EDU Mon Mar 13 17:11:42 1995
> Subject: Re: more whois
> To: dsj at merit.edu (Dale S. Johnson)
> Date: Mon, 13 Mar 1995 14:10:39 -0800 (PST)
> Cc: bmanning at ISI.EDU (Bill Manning)
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 	I talked w/ Andrew P. yesterday and he asked if we (the RA) could 
> 	resurect the ASxxx at ra.net  ASxxx-trouble at ra.net aliases
> 	from the old Merit archives and have a script that builds new ones
> 	from the RADB...
> 
> 	Can we do this?

Your terminology has me confused, but the answer might be close to "we're
all ready doing a poor man's version of this (and have long-term goals)".

The "ASxxx at merit.edu" and "ASxxx-techs at merit.edu" lists that existed up
to last January still exist, though they are going stale through lack
of maintenance.

We do have "ASxxx at ra.net" lists.  They are in place now, though I'm unhappy
enough with the algorithm that I haven't pushed making them public.   Here's
the problem:

   We don't maintain contact information any more under the RA.  This
   is supposed to be a NIC job.  What we would *like* to do is get the
   NIC to agree to give NIC handles and accept registrations from
   anyone who is appropriate to have an entry in the IRR, and then to
   use their NIC information as the contact information.  (They can
   put their NIC handle directly in the AS/Route/Maintainer objects).

Where we are today is that the only information we keep is email addresses
of the contacts, as part of MAIL-FROM lines in the maintainers.  Those
will be stable until the PRDB gets turned off (because they are also
used as the authority records for people submitting NACRs), but even
they will go bad in a hurry as all the responsible ASs quickly remove
their MAIL-FROM lines and replace them with something more secure (like
CRYPT-PW or PGP).  

What gets loaded into the ASxxx at ra.net today is just the mail-from lines,
but, as I say, that system is weak and about to get much weaker.

The solution of record is to tie the IRR in closely with the NIC.  At
that point we can grep the NIC contact information to reestablish good
asXXX email lists.  But not until that happens.

I think these lists are still real useful in the short run, so it would
be really good if we could get something in place quick.  

--Dale




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