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RE: Question on 7.0.0.0/8

  • From: william(at)elan.net
  • Date: Mon Apr 16 13:17:01 2007


On Mon, 16 Apr 2007 [email protected] wrote:

Why doesn't IANA and the RIRs collectively get off their butts and
actually make an "authoritative IP address allocation
directory" one of 
their goals?
And why don't they do all this with some 21st century technology?


A new system based on IRIS protocol (XML based using BEEP as
transport)
will be in place in the future that will work better as a
comprehensive
directory.


I have heard of no such plans. As far as I know, IRIS was designed for
domain name registry whois data which is entirely a separate issue from
IP address whois data.


http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/crisp-charter.html
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4698.txt

Also, I do not consider a complex XML-based
protocol to be 21st century technology. In the 20th century, when you
wanted to do something on the net you invented a new protocol and hacked
together some application.

You need more then just transport to make an application protocol. Whois really does not have standardized format or querying mechanisms or security
mechanisms and that is why all this work. Underlying transport is less of
an issue and I personally was actually for LDAP when group was making a
choice between LDAP-based and XML/BEEP-based foundation.

In the 21st century, you look at what is available on the shelf and
widely in use on the net and adopt that. Most often this turns out to be
a RESTful API that doesn't even need XML, although something like
XML-RPC still fits the bill. I still wonder why the widely used LDAP
protocol can't be adopted for whois lookups since it is used everywhere
in the corporate world. The answer seems to be Not-Invented-Here or
"we're netheads and LDAP smells of bellheads", both of which are
ridiculous arguments in the today's world.

--Michael Dillon