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Organisation Object in the RIPE Database

Purpose

The RIPE Database stores three main types of contact information: person, role and organisation objects.

The person and role objects provide a way to find people responsible for operations or usage of the resources represented in the RIPE Database (IP blocks, Autonomous Systems, and domain names).

However, these do not provide an easy way of mapping resources to a particular organisation. The organisation object fulfills this need.

This document defines how an organisation object works in the RIPE Database and the corresponding database functionality.

Template of the organisation object

The template is available in the RIPE Database documentation.

Definitions of attributes

Following are the definitions of attributes that were first introduced with the organisation object.

"organisation:"

Specifies the ID of an organisation object. An organisation ID is made up of 'ORG-' prefix, followed by 2 to 4 letters, digits, a dash and the database source (in the RIPE Database this is 'RIPE'). For example:

 ORG-SANT1-RIPE

Note that all parts are mandatory, thus ORG-RT-RIPE would be an invalid ID as it is missing the numeric part.

Please see Creating organisation objects section below to find out how to specify auto-generated organisation IDs.

The organisation ID cannot be reused. If an organisation ID was used in the past within an organisation object and then deleted, this ID cannot be used in new organisation objects.

The auto-generation of organisation IDs and preventing reuse of them simplifies the external references. Note that when an organisation changes name, the "org-name:" can be modified accordingly. There is no need to change the organisation ID.

"org-name:"

Specifies the name of the organisation that this organisation object represents in the whois database. This is an ASCII-only text attribute. This restriction is because the attribute is a look-up key and the whois protocol does not allow specifying character sets in queries. The user can put the name of the organisation in non-ASCII character sets in the "descr:" attribute if required.

"org-type:"

Specifies the type of the organisation. The possible values are IANA for Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, RIR for Regional Internet Registries, NIR for National Internet Registries, LIR for Local Internet Registries, and OTHER for all other organisations. Note that in the RIPE NCC service region there are no National Internet Registries, therefore in the RIPE Database there will not be any organisation object with this value in the "org-type:" attribute.

"ref-nfy:"

Specifies the e-mail address to be notified when a reference to the organisation object is added or removed. An e-mail address as defined in RFC 2822.

"mnt-ref:"

Specifies the maintainer objects that are entitled to add references to the organisation object from other objects.

"address:"

Specifies the address of the organisation. This is a free-text attribute.

"org:"

This attribute may appear in any object type. It points to an existing organisation object representing the entity that holds the resource, (in the cases where the whois database object represents an Internet resource). In other objects, it can be used to specify the business relations. The value of this attribute is the ID of the organisation object. It is mandatory in the inetnum and inet6num objects with ALLOCATED-BY-RIR, ALLOCATED PA, ALLOCATED PI and ALLOCATED UNSPECIFIED values. It is optional in all other objects.

The "org:" attribute is single-valued in the inetnum, inet6num and aut-num objects, and it is multi-valued in all other objects. The "org:" attribute is used to specify the holder of a resource in inetnum, inet6num and aut-num objects, thus it must be single-valued in them. In other objects, it specifies business relations (such as a person object, where it can be used to specify whom the person works for) it can be multiple (in the person object example, a person might work for several companies).

Creating organisation objects

The webupdates or syncupdates interface can be used to create an organisation object.

Alternatively, the e-mail interface can be used. For this, you should first retrieve the template. This can be done with the query:

whois -t organisation

Organisation object IDs are auto-generated similar to the way person/role "nic-hdl:" attributes are auto-generated. During creation of the object the user has to specify the ID of an organisation object as AUTO-<digit>, then it will be assigned an appropriate ID. The organisation ID is assigned using the initials of "org-name:" attribute of the object. Or, the user can specify the letter combination he/she prefers. For example if the user wants TTR as the letter combination in the organisation ID, AUTO-1TTR should be put into the "organisation:" attribute during the creation of the object.

After filling in the necessary attributes in the template, and putting AUTO-1 (or AUTO-1<letter-combination>) in the "organisation:" attribute, the object can now be sent to <auto-dbm _at_ ripe _dot_ net> to actually create the object.

An example submission might look like this:

organisation: AUTO-1
org-name:     Ruritania Banking Interchange
org-type:     OTHER
remarks:      This is a dummy organisation object.
              DO NOT reference this object as
              it does not exist. Only for use in
              examples.
address:      1 High Street
address:      Polarcity
address:      Northern Nowhere
phone:        +31 20 5354444
e-mail:       bit-bucket _at_ ripe _dot_ net
admin-c:      HOHO15-RIPE
tech-c:       HOHO15-RIPE
ref-nfy:      bit-bucket _at_ ripe _dot_ net
mnt-ref:      SANTA-MNT
mnt-by:       SANTA-MNT
changed:      ripe-dbm _at_ ripe _dot_ net 20040419
source:       RIPE

The above submission could create the following object in the database:

organisation: ORG-RBI1-RIPE
org-name:     Ruritania Banking Interchange
org-type:     OTHER
remarks:      This is a dummy organisation object.
              DO NOT reference this object as
              it does not exist. Only for use in
              examples.
address:      1 High Street
address:      Polarcity
address:      Northern Nowhere
phone:        +31 20 5354444
e-mail:       bit-bucket _at_ ripe _dot_ net
admin-c:      HOHO15-RIPE
tech-c:       HOHO15-RIPE
ref-nfy:      bit-bucket _at_ ripe _dot_ net
mnt-ref:      RURITANIA-MNT
mnt-by:       SANTA-MNT
changed:      ripe-dbm _at_ ripe _dot_ net 20040419
source:       RIPE

Please note that organisation objects with IANA, RIR, NIR or LIR can only be created by the RIPE NCC. Any other entity must use OTHER in the "org-type:" when creating organisation objects.

Referencing organisation objects from other objects

The "org:" attribute is used to reference the organisation objects from other objects. There are extra authorisation checks when adding a reference to an organisation object. Suppose we want to update the following person object

person:       Santa Claus
address:      Northern Hemisphere
phone:        +31 20 5354444
e-mail:       bit-bucket _at_ ripe _dot_ net
nic-hdl:      HOHO15-RIPE
remarks:      This is a dummy person object.
              DO NOT reference this object as
              it does not exist. Only for use in
              examples.
mnt-by:       SANTA-MNT
changed:      ripe-dbm _at_ ripe _dot_ net 20030801
source:       RIPE

to add "org: ORG-RBI1-RIPE" so that the object becomes

person:       Santa Claus
address:      Northern Hemisphere
phone:        +31 20 5354444
e-mail:       bit-bucket _at_ ripe _dot_ net
nic-hdl:      HOHO15-RIPE
remarks:      This is a dummy person object.
              DO NOT reference this object as
              it does not exist. Only for use in
              examples.
mnt-by:       SANTA-MNT
org:          ORG-RBI1-RIPE
changed:      ripe-dbm _at_ ripe _dot_ net 20030801
source:       RIPE

Where the ORG-RBI1-RIPE organisation object is as it appears above in Creating organisation objects section.

As with the normal authorisation/authentication check, the check is performed on SANTA-MNT maintainer because it appears in the person object's "mnt-by:" attribute. Additionally, the RURITANIA-MNT maintainer is also checked, as it appears in the "mnt-ref:" attribute of the ORG-RBI1-RIPE organisation object being referenced.

However, please note that once the "org:" attribute is added to an object the subsequent modifications to this object are not checked against the organisation object referenced in "ref-nfy:" attribute. This check is performed only when an "org:" attribute is added to an existing object, or when a new object with "org:" attribute is created. This means that when removing an "org:" attribute from an object this check is not performed.

When an "org:" attribute is added to an object or it is removed from an object, the e-mail address(es) in the "ref-nfy:" attribute of the organisation object is notified. Please note that "ref-nfy:" attribute is optional in organisation objects.

Finding the resources allocated or assigned to an organisation

The "org:" attribute is an inverse key in the whois objects. This enables the users of the whois database to find all the resources allocated or assigned to an organisation with an inverse query. For example, the query:

whois -r -i org  ORG-SANT1-RIPE

will return all objects that have ORG-SANT1-RIPE in their "org:" attributes.

Regional Internet Registries (RIRs), IANA and organisation objects

All RIRs and IANA have organisation objects in the RIPE Database that are maintained by the RIPE NCC. The IANA organisation object is used to mark the resources maintained by IANA, and the RIR organisation objects are used to mark the resources maintained by the respective RIR.

You can always contact us for questions and suggestions about this procedure.

Created: 14 Dec 2010 - Last updated: 10 Aug 2022 —