RIPE whois server

Dear people,

	I am currently working on a new whois server and update procedure
and would like to know if there are any additional features you would like to
see in the server (I'll leave the update procedure for now, still too early
to talk about features).

I have rewritten de whois server and the index program in Perl, and have a
prototype running (not the production server).

I have made the following changes:

- database objects are *completely* configurable from a configuration file
	- this means the indexer follows this file to look for keys
	- the server follows this file for recursive lookups

- multiple databases can be served, all seperately indexed, and kept in
seperate files (with the same object structure though)
	- databases can be indexed at different times
	- all configurable from config file.

- additional functionality in the server
	- "-s SOURCE" flag to ask the data from specific source
		(in the prototype "RIPE", "MERIT" and "INTERNIC")
	- default SOURCE configurable in config file
	- all SOURCES ("-a" flag) configurable in config file
	- "-g" option to indicate an object "grep" for a certain string,
		in stead of the normal key lookup (running low priority - slow)
	- able to handle more queries/sec (no longer running out of inetd)
	- an option to keep a connection to the server open, for multiple 
		queries fast after each other. (esp useful for applications
		like prtraceroute)

Any other features you always wanted to have in the server ? Now is the time
to make them known, so that we could incorporate them.

If you want to have a go at the new server, it is running on rijp.ripe.net on
the normal whois port (no uptime guarentees). One thing is that the new flags
(-g and -s) do not work with the RIPE whois client ;-( An old client with the
flags inside quotes should work. Oh, just remembered, -g is not implemented
yet ;-) The data in the prototype server is a bit outdated (last weeks
databases or so).

so, with an old client you should be able to say:

whois -h rijp.ripe.net "-s ripe marten"
whois -h rijp.ripe.net "-s merit 192.87.45"
whois -h rijp.ripe.net "-s internic mt2"
whois -h rijp.ripe.net "-a 192.87.45"

You can give it a stress test if you wish, we have done the same, and could
not make it crash yet (we did 50 parallel sessions of 10 sequential queries
each)

A little bit on the update procedure, we are implementing an "on-the-fly"
update procedure, that is, no "once-a-day" updates, but updates are processed
and incorporated in the running database (and whois server) immediately when
they come in. This would mean that (because there will be no manual
intervention any longer) that more updates will be bounced because of syntax
errors, but you get the bounces fast ;-) Then once a day the guarded tags
will be added at a set time. They will be ignored during the normal updates.
Please do not nag too much on the update procedure yet, it is still in a
"pre-pre-pre-prototype" stage.

So, so much for a quick update, if you have suggestions, please let me know.

-Marten