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RIPE Database Working Group Minutes RIPE 72

Thursday, 26 May 14:00 - 15:30

A. Administrative Matters [~10 min]

  • Welcome
  • Select scribe (thanks to Nigel for volunteering again!)
  • Finalise agenda
    • No new items
  • Approval of minutes from previous WG meeting(s)
  • Approved with the modification of AP71.2 to read RPSL rather than RPKI

Review of action list (Nigel Titley)

[AP67.5][AA-WG] To check that the Anti-Abuse WG has properly specified both what should be done with email that is sent to the abuse contact that is sent to the abuse contact and (possibly) its format. This is currently with the AA-WG and will be returned when complete.

[AP69.2][RIPE NCC] Come up with straw man proposals for displaying history for objects where available.

Converted to Work item

[AP69.3][RIPE NCC] To examine and report on possible solutions to improving geolocation data in the

RIPE DB. Closed as no great interest from the WG

[AP70.1][All] Discuss deprecation of plain text passwords in email. Will be converted to a Work item by Tim (RIPE NCC)

[AP70.2][RIPE NCC] Come up with a proposal for the status: field to fix the requirement that certain objects may need multi-valued status. Converted to a Work item.

[AP71.1][WW144] To organise an effort to look at the fact that the original RFC-set on RPSL has been overtaken by events and should be re-examined. Taken offline.

[AP71.2][Marco, Erik, Job, Tim] To work on a method of cross authentication of autumn (possibly involving RPKI). Converted to a Work item.

With the advent of the Work item system, the Action Point system is terminated and this will be the last

Action Point roundup.

B. RIPE Database Development Process: Numbered Work Items [~5 min] Job Snijders

An observation has been that it is sometimes difficult to get things done in the WG. In order to regularise this the concept of numbered work items has been created. See presentation for how this works. The process should result in a series of well defined problem statements which can be worked against.

RV asked whether there is a website that can provide a statement of the process and a list of all active work items. This is not yet available but there is the intention for such a site to be available shortly. He also asked whether we should be more explicit as to what needs to be done to finish a phase. He felt that this was necessary.

The response was that time limits on the phases would be set and this would force the process to move forward.

Consensus would be called on whether the WG considered that a phase was finished.

C. Follow-up From GAC Public Safety Working Group in ICANN [~10 min] Hans Petter Holen

See presentation.

Brian Nesbit stated that law enforcement are likely to need more and more access to database information and their reasonable requests should be considered.

RV felt that extra markup in the database could help law enforcement and could be a possible way forward. It could be one of the next work items.

Documentation of the meaning of attributes should be made clearer as this is often a source of confusion.

Milton Mueller warned that extending the use of the database beyond what it was intended for may be dangerous from a data protection point of view.

Peter Koch noted that use of the database in this manner was certainly outside its documented purpose.

D. RIPE Database Operational Update

New and Revised RIPE Database Software Functionality (proposed, test, deployment)

Recent Database Issues [~15 min] Tim Bruijnzeels, RIPE NCC.

See presentation.

  • Setting abuse-c for remaining organisations with resources allocated or assigned by the RIPE NCC
  • Cleaning up Organisation Names in "descr:", ripe objects as single text field

Rolled back and will be re-run on 2nd June 2016 as the first time the formatting was modified and no announcement was made.

  • Restrict usage of RIPE-NCC-RPSL-MNT

This should not be used on mnt-by: and is now enforced. Existing objects were cleaned up on 28th April.

No complaints but a request from the room for a process to unlock or delete locked person objects.

  • Increase daily database dump frequency

Needs significant effort and will be discussed as a NWI. However the requestor (Job) withdrew the request.

  • Clean-up of "abuse-mailbox:" in certain organisation objects, following acceptance of RIPE policy proposal 2011-06

This will be further discussed with the AA-WG and possibly create an NWI.

  • Locking unmaintained person and role objects in the RIPE Database

This is a hijack risk especially with IPv4 runout.

Discussed with the RIPE NCC EB and all such objects were locked on 6th April.

  • Other aspects

RV and Job will work together to formulate a problem statement concerning the requirement for an audit trail on object modifications.

E. AFRINIC IRR Homing Project Update [~5 min] Tim Bruijnzeels, RIPE NCC

See presentation.

NWI has been sent to the group and responses are requested on the list.

F. Recent Work on the UI Improvements + Phasing Out the LIR Portal Object Editors [~20 min] Alex Band, RIPE NCC

See presentation.

Some measurements of errors rates by members using the web portal show that error rates for certain operations are unacceptably high. Analysis of the use of the portal show that members find great difficulty in creating domain objects and inetnum objects. The UI is being extensively modified to guide users towards correct usage. Generous use of auto-complete, prompting, greying-out etc can cut down the number of errors thrown by the database. Error rates on creating inetnum: objects have been cut by nearly 50%. Work is now starting on locking down status: attribute values and making reverse DNS setup less error prone. Reclaim has been renamed to Force-delete as being less confusing and is now easily accessible from the portal. Text updates have been restored but with better help text and diffs. Every page has now got the ability to report bugs. Now possible to set the default maintainer for all objects that have joint responsibility. This then allows those attributes that may be modified by the user maintainer to be done through the database interface.

RV was worried that tweaking the authorisation model could cause problems and asked that in the future such changes should be passed by the WG first.

A question was asked as to whether there were further things that can be done to improve the interface.

It was acknowledged that this was certainly possible.

Lu Heng commented that RIPE NCC has the best interface to the database and asked that the techniques be shared with other RIRs.

G. Follow-up From AA-WG: 2016-01 [~5 min] Piotr Strzyżewski

See presentation.

This extends the abuse-c: attribute to make it mandatory for all resources including legacy. This will make the business rules less complex and will impact the database. WG members were encouraged to follow the discuss on the AA-WG mailing list.

H. NWI-1: Staying On Top of Abuse Contact Changes [~5 min] Piotr Strzyżewski

See presentation.

Resource holders can be unaware of changes made to their resources. Currently in phase 1 and looking for a concensus on the problem statement. Please comment on the mailing list. There is a proposed solution by Denis Walker which consists of adding the abuse-notif: attribute to the ORGANISATION object. Move to a discussion on the mailing list and firstly agree on the problem statement.

I. ROUTE Objects for Non-RIPE Resources [~15 min] Job Snijders

See presentation.

There are issues with weakly authenticated objects in the database, being those objects which have foreign attributes. An attempt is being made to formulate a good problem statement and decide whether or not to try and take this forward.

RV said that it would help if objects that were foreign could be marked somehow in the database. DB-WG members were strongly encouraged to take the discussion to the email list.

Y. Input From Other Working Groups and/or Task Forces

None.

Z. AOB

None.