[db-wg] abuse-c + org

[Apologies for duplicate emails.]

Dear Gilles,

These points were discussed on the Anti Abuse Working Group mailing 
lists quite extensively in June and December 2012. As you correctly 
pointed out policy ripe-563 says "This policy introduces a new contact 
attribute named "abuse-c:”, that can be included in inetnum, inet6num 
and aut-num objects." During the discussions last year it was asked if 
the RIPE NCC should 'interpret' policy. Our understanding is that this 
policy expresses the desire and goal of the RIPE community for a new 
feature in the RIPE Database. To achieve these goals this desire needs 
to be translated into, and incorporated in, an efficient, technical 
database design.

In the RIPE Labs article 
https://labs.ripe.net/Members/kranjbar/implementation-details-of-policy-2011-06 
we pointed out that there are about 3.7 million Internet resource 
objects in the RIPE Database. To add an "abuse-c:" attribute physically 
to each of these objects is unmanageable. Every users network is 
physically linked to their existing ORGANISATION object. Each user only 
needs to add one "abuse-c:" attribute in their ORGANISATION object and 
all their networks are covered.

When any address is queried in the RIPE Database, the software will find 
the related "abuse-c:" reference and return this information as part of 
the query. By returning this information as a default with each query we 
have satisfied the policy requirement that the "abuse-c:" is "included 
in inetnum, inet6num and aut-num objects". It is not physically stored 
in each object in an unmanageable way, but logically associated with 
each object in an efficient and manageable way.

This implementation was presented to and discussed by the community on 
the Anti Abuse Working Group mailing list last year and Brian declared 
that a consensus had been reached in his email on December 5, on behalf 
of the co-chairs of the DB and AA Working Groups:
http://www.ripe.net/ripe/mail/archives/anti-abuse-wg/2012-December/001993.html

In a follow up RIPE Labs article 
https://labs.ripe.net/Members/denis/creating-and-finding-abuse-contacts-in-the-ripe-database 
the RIPE NCC explained how this implementation works in practise. You 
may recall that we discussed the details of how these references using 
the ORGANISATION object worked and how they can be fine tuned:
http://www.ripe.net/ripe/mail/archives/anti-abuse-wg/2012-December/001998.html

The old RIPE Database reference manuals on the ripe.net web site still 
refer to the use of "abuse-mailbox:" attributes in other object types, 
but don't refer to "abuse-c:" at all. These attributes were never 
allowed to be added directly to the resource objects even in the legacy 
software. These old reference manuals are now out of date in many 
respects and should perhaps be clearly marked as archived documents.

I hope this answers your specific questions.

Regards
Denis Walker
Business Analyst
RIPE NCC Database Team


On 27/06/2013 10:06, Gilles Massen wrote:
> Dear WG, and RIPE NCC staff,
>
> While trying to add an abuse-c to our resources, I was quite surprised
> that you can only attach the abuse-c to an org object (while the policy
> suggests otherwise and implementation notes are not very clear on the
> limitation).
>
> So I'd like to ask why this restriction exists? What is wrong with
> adding an abuse-c directly to an inet[6]num or aut-num?
>
> Best regards,
> Gilles
>