classless range notation

Dear folks,

In a draft document sent out last week on representations of IP
addresses in the RIPE database there was an invention by us, the
classless range. This was in addition to the various notations used in
the database currently, and the various classless notations.

In the database working group at the RIPE meeting (with small
attendance, since the routing working group met at the same time)
there were some different ideas on the classless range notation. Some
said we should simply use prefix/length notation also for assignments,
but this does not allow non bit-aligned blocks registered as one in
the database, others suggested some other notations.

What I would like to get a feel of is whether you feel that we should
allow for a representation that can contain non bit-aligned blocks,
and if so how this should be represented in the inetnum object. I
would like some discussion and preferably proposals and work from
there. This will need to be implemented some day, and also the
document should be finalized at some stage, preferably at the same
time ripe-81++ is finalized.

-Marten

PS If you have not seen the document, it is available as:

ftp.ripe.net:ripe/drafts/ripe-clarep.{ps,txt}

General comments are also welcme, although it seemed that the
classless range notation needs some discussion.