[db-wg] The RIPE Database needs your attention...

Colleagues

We still have many outstanding issues, some of which have been on and
off the table for years. We cannot make any progress on them as we do
not have the attention of enough people in the community. It will be
good if we can clear up some of these issues before the next RIPE
meeting. For that to happen we need more of you to volunteer to focus
a little bit of your attention on database issues over the coming
months.

The database may not be your highest priority, but it is still an
essential tool for many LIR's business and a fundamental part of the
whole registry system. If you can PLEASE offer a few moments of your
attention over the coming months we can wrap up many of these
outstanding issues. Often people who agree with a suggestion, or have
no preference, say nothing. We need you to say something so we know
you agree or don't disagree. It is not good to declare consensus based
on only 3 people commenting.

Maybe we can start with the recent conversation about country codes.
If you look back over the DB-WG mailing list for January we more or
less have a couple of people supporting and one objecting to my
suggestions.

My suggestions for the community to consider are these:
1/ The country: attribute in ORGANISATION objects is only used to
specify the legal address country of organisations (including
individuals) holding internet resources and is tied to the country
values in the extended delegated stats file. These values are
maintained by the RIPE NCC. This is what the community agreed to when
they accepted the implementation plan for NWI-10.

2/ The country: attribute in ORGANISATION objects cannot be set by
users to meaningless, undefined values for other reasons, as this was
not in the agreed implementation plan.

3/ The country: attribute in INET(6)NUM objects is made optional.

4/ We define the optional country: attribute in INET(6)NUM objects to
be used for geolocation purposes only

5/ If included, this country code will signal that all the addresses
covered by this range/prefix are used within the geographical boundary
of the country value.

6/ The geofeed: attribute can be used where a block of addresses are
used in multiple countries or if more fine grained details are needed.

7/ An optional country: attribute could be added to the AUT-NUM object
if anyone feels it necessary to specify a geolocation for an ASN.

As always your thoughts are welcome...

cheers
denis
co-chair DB-WG