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Glossary

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 Attribute Continuation Line

When an attribute value uses more than one line, the extra lines are continuation lines.

 Autonomous System (AS)

A group of IP networks that have a single and clearly defined external routing policy, operated by one or more network operators.

 Autonomous System (AS) Number

A unique, numeric value given to an AS. The range of numbers starts at 0 and extends up to a maximum value held by a 32-bit unsigned number 4,294,967,295.

 Canonical

Standard or typical. For IPv6 and DNS, it represents a standard textual representation format.

 Child Object

This object is one level down (more specific) in a hierarchy of INETNUM or INET6NUM objects

 Child objects are more specific

Both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses are structured in hierarchies with 0/0 and ::/0 as the roots of the structures. The root objects have child objects forming the next layer in the hierarchical structure. The root objects are therefore the parents of the child objects. This is repeated throughout the structure as more layers are added. Parent objects are considered to be less specific than the child objects. Child objects are considered to be more specific to the parent objects.

 Contact Details

All details relating to name, postal address, phone, fax, email or any other form of electronic communication that is used by a person or an organisation.

 Data Contained Therein

A legal phrase referring to information stored in the RIPE Database.

 Data Controller

A person or organisation that determines the purpose and the manner in which personal data is processed.

 Dictionary Attacks

In computer security, this is a technique for breaking an authorisation mechanism by trying to determine a password, passphrase or an encryption key by trying hundreds or sometimes millions of likely possibilities, such as words in a dictionary.

 Domain Name

A unique name that identifies an Internet location such as a website.

 Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC)

The Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) is a suite of Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) specifications for securing certain kinds of information provided by the Domain Name System (DNS) as used on Internet Protocol (IP) networks. It is a set of extensions to DNS which provide to DNS clients (resolvers) origin authentication of DNS data, authenticated denial of existence, and data integrity, but not availability or confidentiality.

 Dummification

A process that removes personally identifiable information from the RIPE Database output.

 Dummified

When all personally identifiable information has been removed from the data.

 ENUM

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) protocol that maps E.164 telephone numbers to Internet services using the DNS.

 Global Resource Service (GRS)

The RIPE NCC operates mirrors of the other RIRs' databases as well as some of the major routing registries. Only operational data is stored based on the published statistics of authoritative resources from each RIR. The RIPE Whois service allows this set of mirrors to be queried as a single logical database and returns authoritative responses from the appropriate source.

 Glue Record

The IP address of a name server held at the Domain Name registry. Glue records are required when you wish to set the name servers of a domain name to a hostname under the domain name itself.

 Heuristic

Using experience-based techniques for problem-solving.

 Hierarchical Address Space

Individual IP addresses are ‘flat’ addresses. Each address is unique but it does not say anything about where the address is relative to any other address. They are usually allocated and assigned as ranges of addresses. Further sub allocations and assignments can be made from allocations. This builds an administrative hierarchy within the address space, even though the address space itself is not hierarchical.

 IANA

Internet Assigned Numbers Authority

 in-addr.arpa

A special domain name used to achieve reverse delegation for IPv4 addresses.

 INET(6)NUM

A common abbreviation meaning both INETNUM and INET6NUM objects.

 Internet Number Registry (INR)

A registry that allocates Internet number resources and holds and publishes details of Internet number resource information.

 Internet Number Resources

Globally unique address space (IPv4 and IPv6) and Autonomous System Numbers (ASNs) issued by any Internet Number Registry.

 Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4)

IPv4 uses 32-bit (four-byte) addresses, which gives a total pool of 4,294,967,296 (2^32) addresses. These addresses are normally represented in a dotted quad notation. An example of an IPv4 address is: 192.0.2.35.

 Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6)

IPv6 uses 128-bit addresses, which gives a total pool of 2^128 addresses. These addresses are normally represented as eight groups of four hexadecimal digits separated by colons. An example of an IPv6 address is: 2001:db8:cd0f:421d:2209:bc:80ba:2095.

 Internet Routing Registry (IRR)

A registry that holds and publishes details of Internet routing information.

 IP Address

A unique numerical address used to identify a particular piece of hardware connected to the Internet. An IP address services two principal functions: host or network interface identification and location addressing.

 ip6.arpa

A special domain name used to achieve reverse delegation for IPv6 addresses.

 Latin-1

A character set defined by ISO8859-1.