[db-wg] whois-server friendly client programming

Hi,

I am writing a tool to generate OpenBGPD filters from the policy 
specification in aut-num objects.

Naturally, this involves sending a lot of queries to the whois servers:
-one for the aut-num in question
-one for every as-set given in the policy
-one for every member of these as-sets, and recursively for their 
 members, until we're down to an all-aut-num list
-for each aut-num, a query for the routes it exports (-i origin <AS>)

I do have extensive caching in place, all responses are beeing cached 
(or rather, the parse result), so no query is ever sent twice.

nontheless, a lot of queries remain.

right now, I have whois.ripe.net hardwired, of course this is going 
to change before the tool is released.
I am using
  "-r -a -T <objtype> <object>"
for aut-num and as-set, and
  "-r -a -T <objtype> -i origin <as>"
for route objects.

Questions:
can I make life easier for the whois servers by using another set of 
query options?

what is a good default whois server? whois.ripe.net? whois.radb.net? 

of course, I run into the penalty delays the whois server imposes
because of the amount of queries I send. How do I deal with that?
do nothing, just accept the delay (that's how it is now)?

is it possible (and feasable!) to mirror the entire IRR? is this 
documented somewhere? I'd happily point to that documentation and 
recommend running a local mirror in the manpage if that is feasable.

the forced delays also make development pretty painful ;(

Thanks & Greetz

Henning Brauer

-- 
Henning Brauer, hb at bsws.de, henning at openbsd.org
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