[address-policy-wg] 2023-04 New Policy Proposal (Add AGGREGATED-BY-LIR status for IPv4 PA assignments)

Hi Tore

I will first answer your points in this email, now I've had more time
to think about it. Then I plan to send two longer emails. One on the
bigger picture and one specifically about your proposal text. It is
disappointing that so many people just said "+1 great proposal". I
think they have responded to the headline and not considered the
details or the implications. So let's consider some of them...

On Wed, 13 Sept 2023 at 08:59, Tore Anderson <tore at fud.no> wrote:
>
> Hello Denis,
>
> Let me start off by clearing up a misunderstanding:
>
> My brief example did not mean to convey that non-uniform contact
> information is the only thing that could make a set of objects non-
> uniform and thus unsuitable for AGGREGATED-BY-LIR.
>
> Rather, the exact opposite was the intended meaning - which is that
> almost any attribute can make a set of objects non-uniform. The tech-c
> attribute was only used an example to demonstrate this.
>
> With that out of the way, my answers to your remaining points follow
> in-line:
>
> * denis walker
>
> > Now let's look at a real life example.
> >
> > whois -rBm 195.238.192.0 - 195.238.223.255
> >
> > The first thing to note is that the admin-c and tech-c values are the
> > same in all the more specific assignments. Even the mnt-by is the
> > same, although you make no mention if that is a blokker for
> > aggregation or not. So by your definition these are 'completely
> > uniform' objects and can be aggregated.
>
> As I clarified above, these objects are in my view *not* uniform, as
> they have distinct netname, descr and country attributes (possibly
> others I missed too, I only skimmed through them quickly).
>
> The LIR in question clearly has a policy of publishing the street
> address of each assignee in the descr attribute. That is totally fine,
> and will continue to be totally fine after 2023-04 is implemented, but
> it makes their objects unsuitable for aggregation.

This is where the implications get interesting. Each of the objects in
the example I gave is in itself individually aggregatable. There is
nothing in your policy proposal that says an aggregate must cover
multiple assignments to multiple End Users. You say:
"In case of an audit, the LIR must be able to present statistics
showing the number of individual assignments made in all objects with
a status of 'AGGREGATED-BY-LIR."
So the number 1 is valid. You don't require the block size of the
individual assignments to be specified in the audit. So that 1 could
be the same size as the aggregate or a single IP address.
For every one of the assignments in this example allocation you can
change the status to AGGREGATED-BY-LIR and remove all the
identification and contact information for the actual end user. Your
proposal has dropped the requirement:
"When an End User has a network using public address space this must
be registered separately with the contact details of the End User."
It is not specified in the current policy if those contact details
must be the tech-c/admin-c or the address of the company. So the
objects in my example comply with the current policy.
With the current policy only when an End User is a natural person can
you replace the contact details with that of the LIR. With your policy
ANY or even ALL End Users can replace their contact details with that
of the LIR by changing the status to AGGREGATED-BY-LIR. In theory
every ASSIGNED PA object in the RIPE Database can become an
AGGREGATED-BY-LIR object with only LIR contact details. Now that won't
happen as a lot of responsible End Users will want their contact
details in the database for network problem resolution. But we all
know there are LIRs who provide services to spammers and other
abusers, knowingly or otherwise. You can be sure these End Users'
details will disappear from the database.

>
> > You will also note that all these objects contain optional descr
> > attributes. These attributes contain name and address details of the
> > end user. That is important information for many stakeholder groups
> > using the RIPE Database public registry. That detail will be lost in
> > an aggregation. Given that current policy requires these assignments
> > to be registered in the public registry, many users do include this
> > detail. Now we all know the RIPE Database design and technology is
> > very old and it does currently require some effort to manage this
> > data. (A problem that all users have noticed but no one has attempted
> > to fix.) Given a 'short cut' option, human nature suggests people
> > will use it, even if it is not the right thing to do for a public
> > registry. So aggregating across the whole database, may result in a
> > massive amount of detail being lost from the public registry.
>
> It is important to note that the information you mention as "important"
> here - the assignee's address - is (as you rightly point out) optional
> to include. An LIR is under no obligation to publish this information,
> and the inetnum object does not even contain an attribute dedicated to
> it.
>
> (While the organisation object has mandatory org-name and address
> attributes, the org attribute is optional in inetnum objects.)
>
> Thus the LIR in question already has a 'short cut' option available to
> them, should they feel managing the assignees' address information in
> the RIPE database is too burdensome - they can simply chose to not
> include that information in the first place.
>
> I want to emphasise that this policy proposal does not grant them this
> option, it is already there today.

This again is misleading. The LIR CANNOT do what you suggest with the
current policy. The current policy says:
"When an End User has a network using public address space this must
be registered separately with the contact details of the End User." As
I said above, It is not specified if those contact details must be the
tech-c/admin-c or the address of the company. In the example I gave
the admin-c/tech-c are the details of the LIR. But they comply with
the policy by including the address of the companies. They are the End
User contact details. If they chose to remove this optional
information then they no longer comply with current policy. But you
drop this policy condition. Therefore with your policy proposal you
allow them to remove this optional info and still comply with the
policy. Netname is just a string of LIR defined characters and does
not need to be unique. So they can all be set to the same string.
Country is also LIR defined and generally meaningless so they can all
be set to the same pointless value. So your proposal allows this LIR
to make all these assignments 'the same' and replace them all with a
single AGGREGATED-BY-LIR object. This is a very significant change to
the public registry. With this proposal ANY set of data can be
anonymised. There is no longer any requirement for End Users running
public networks to be identifiable or contactable.

This IS an option granted by this proposal that is NOT there today.

I can see a follow up question to the DB-WG, "How do I aggregate a
whole allocation?" Which may well replace the current question, "How
do I assign a whole allocation?" The consequence of this proposal is
the same as a previous suggestion to make assignments optional. Both
allow for the mass anonymisation of End Users.

>
> > Also note that there are gaps in the more specific assignments for
> > this allocation. For example 195.238.193.224 - 195.238.193.255 is not
> > assigned. Can your aggregated objects span these gaps? If so then we
> > lose sight of what address space is in use or available. It may no
> > longer be needed for further allocations but people do still use that
> > information.
>
> Yes, just as in IPv6, aggregated objects can span gaps. This is
> essential, as the primary use case targeted by AGGREGATED-BY-LIR is
> automated assignment pools with a high churn rate (e.g., a dynamic DHCP
> pool).

This may be your specified primary use case, but it can then be
extended to the entire database.

>
> In such environments, the .1, .2 and .3 addresses might be assigned
> before .2 might get de-assigned again - all within seconds, with no
> operator involvement. We believe it is not necessary to reflect this
> high level of granularity and rapid churn rate in the RIPE database.
>
> > The assignments are all randomly sized. Which is why you have dropped
> > the inet6num assignment-size attribute for inetnum objects. So if I
> > amgetting abuse from one specific IP address what should I do? I have
> > noidea from the aggregated block what the block size is that includes
> > this one IP address. Is there any other way to find this information,
> > maybe from routing details? If not, should I block and blacklist the
> > entire aggregated block? That could affect hundreds, maybe even
> > thousands, of users in some cases. This is not a problem with IPv6 as
> > you know the size of the block containing that address.
>
> My personal recommendation would be to block the specific IP address
> you are receiving abusive traffic from and send a complaint to the
> abuse-c for the inetnum in question.

Are you suggesting that abusers generally work with single IP
addresses, rather than cycling through a block of addresses?

>
> Note that this is not really much different than what you have to do
> today for abuse coming from customer assignments that are «registered
> as part of the service provider's internal infrastructure», cf. ripe-
> 708 section 6.2.

Just a note that ripe-708 was the address policy of 2018. There have
been 5 updates since then.

> That said, AGGREGATED-BY-LIR would here have made it
> clear that the abusive address is indeed assigned to a downstream
> customer and is not part of the service provider's internal
> infrastructure.

Take a look at these two examples of real data:
82.116.118.0 - 82.116.119.255
88.149.40.0 - 88.149.40.255

One is listed in a remarks as "dynamic DSL address pool" and the other
as "DHCP Customers". They are already aggregated. What do we gain by
changing the status on these objects from ASSIGNED PA to
AGGREGATED-BY-LIR? Suppose one LIR changes the status and the other
does not. As you said it is optional. Nothing changes for either LIR
in terms of what they must create, modify or delete in the database.
They are already aggregates. What can a casual viewer of this data in
the database deduce from these two new objects with different status
values? Without parsing the remarks they cannot deduce anything.
Either could be a single End User or multiple End Users. The status
doesn't distinguish either option. Why do we need a new status value?
We end up with two values that are completely interchangeable with no
way to interpret their different meanings without parsing remarks.

The bottom line is that this new status value adds no new benefit, but
can be seriously mis-used to cause considerable damage to the RIPE
Database as a public registry. It WILL be misused by those operating
public networks who wish to keep their details hidden from public
view.

cheers
denis
co-chair DB-WG

>
> Tore