[ris-int] Re: Update to RIS raw data format for 4-byte ASNs

[ I can't cc to sg at ripe.net, unless someone approves it in mailman ]

On Fri, Mar 30, 2007 at 02:10:24PM -0700, Lorenzo Colitti wrote:
> as a user of libbgpdump, I'm curious: does this change break existing 
> users of the MRT format, even if they don't care about 32-bit ASNs?

Yes for RIB dumps. For update dumps, you just won't see any updates from
a 4-byte AS peer. For RIB dumps, the entire format changed, so you won't
see anything with older versions.

> sure you don't want people who download the RIS raw data and try to 
> parse it with route_btoa or old versions of libbgpdump to stop being 
> able to use the raw data files, right?

I prefer not to, but IMHO, it was the best option here. The other option
could be to dump only route entries with a 4-byte AS in the new format.
But that would lead to a very very nasty quagga patch and people might
be missing routes without knowing.

> If this stuff did break, were the users warned with an appropriate email 
> to the ris-users mailing list? I didn't see one, but admittedly I only 
> briefly scanned the archives...

Yes. One on Jan 11, one on Mar 15 with details of the new format, one
on Mar 22 (also sent to routing-wg) to say that changes will be applied
on Mar 27.

cheers,
-- 
Erik Romijn                 RIPE NCC jr. software engineer
http://www.ripe.net/        Information Services dept.