draft of proposed announcement

Daniel,
Here is a draft of the announcement of the Merit Routing Registry.
We would like to make this announcement real soon now and hope
that we can come to an agreement about the text.

Initially, for the first couple of weeks, while Laurent completes
work on a prtraceroute that can recognize the extended syntax
we will have a bit of a kludge.

"as-in" and "as-out" records entered into the MeritRR will be syntax-
checked and stored in the MeritRR completely as they are entered;  however
these records will not be used directly by prtraceroute.  Instead, new,
temporary "as-in" and "as-out" information will be seen by prtraceroute.
This information has all of the detail of the "as-in" and "as-out" 
information removed, and replaced by the word "ANY".  As a result of this,
prtraceroute will correctly identify the AS of each network it traverses.
It will not, however, present meaningful information on the right 
side of the output describing the nature of the transitions between ASs 
(e.g. primary, ERROR, etc.)

Whois queries to Merit's  database will return both the full-syntax and
the shortened "ANY" records.  As soon as the modified pretraceroute
is ready (~2 weeks) the "ANY" syntax will be removed, and the new 
prtraceroute will work with the full information available.

We think we have addressed the issues of compatibility between
our registries and are ready to roll.  We are just waiting to
hear from you all so we can do this together.

          --Elise

-----------------------proposed announcement----------------------

The RIPE Registry has been collecting routing information for
Autonomous Systems which are based in Europe.  This information 
has proven very useful in discovering and resolving reachability
and routing problems for the segment of the Internet which is
defined by the registry.

Merit and RIPE have been working together to establish a peer
routing registry for North America (and potentially other regions
of the world).  Together we have defined a minimum set of
policy attributes which are described in the aut-num object,
which are as-in and as-out.

This minimum set, in its most basic form, has been described in the
document RIPE-81.  Whereas this set of policy descriptions is
adequate for most standard routing requirements, some Autonomous
Systems have more complex requirements.  Merit has defined an
extended definition for as-in and as-out as well as defining
some new attributes (e.g. as_default) that will permit the
description of more complex routing scenarios.

Merit is ready to accept network and policy registrations in
the Merit Routing Registry. Those registrations may be of the
basic type pioneered by RIPE or network providers may experiment
with the new extended syntax defined by Merit.  Documentation for 
registering in the Merit Routing Registry can be found on 
merit.edu:/pub/meritrr.

Since this is a new service, we consider ourselves still in the
pilot phase; however, we expect that any initial glitches should
be able to be resolved in a timely fashion.  We do need some more
experience with registrations to test the interactions with the 
RIPE Registry and the interpretation of the extended syntax.

Merit and RIPE anticipate that the two registries will provide
a more comprehensive picture of the routing interactions in the
Internet.  We are working together to assure that the two registries
appear like one virtual registry to the various tools that are
developed.  We welcome your comments on all aspects of this project.

		Elise Gerich and Daniel Karrenberg





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