Testing classless database

[Marten Terpstra <]

Folks,

As you may have guessed, we have put quite some work over the last few
months into getting the RIPE database classless. We currently have a
beta implementation running, with the idea that we will switch to this
software shortly after the RIPE meeting.

We would like you to have a look at the whois server we currently have
running on my workstation rijp.ripe.net. If you have some time, please
fire off some queries to this machine to see if the server responds
like you would expect it to respond. A few things:

- the new server is slightly slower than the current one. This mainly
because of the classless lookups, and the fact that the database is no
longer kept in one file, but seperate files per object type, each with
their own index. Also the server uses data on a remote file system.

- although the server supports more and less specific lookups for
networks, the current client you may have will not support this. A new
client will be given out as soon as this has been properly tested at
the NCC.

- you can now specify network lookups of the forms:

	192.87.45.1
	192.87.45.1/32

ie host addresses are recognized, and prefix/length lookups are
recognized. The old style queries like "128.141" are still supported
as well.

- the default behaviour for network queries is that the server will
give an exact match if available or the first less specific match for
this query. So for host or subnet queries, the server will output the
classful network mostly.

- the test database is aligned with the real database for most of the
data. We have also put in quite some test data like the ripe-81 routes
and some inet-rtr objects. Please use this database only for testing,
not for authoritative output. Because we are still working on all
this, the new objects may sometimes show up and sometimes not.

- we have also generated objects for the class C blocks that we have
delegated to local IRs. So, for queries of non-assigned numbers, you
should get the class C block they come out of.

Basically we would like to get an idea from you that we have not
changed the look and feel of the server in a way that may cause tools
you may have that use the whois server to fail.

If you find any problems, please direct them to me personally.

Cheers,

-Marten

PS Please note you have to do:

whois -h rijp.ripe.net <query>

to get the new database software to respond.