[Fwd: RWhois mailing list scour results]

[Shane Kerr]

Here's an e-mail I put together for our internal use last month, about
RWhois.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: RWhois mailing list scour results
Date: Mon, 07 Feb 2000 13:55:58 -0500
From: Shane Kerr <kerr at arin.net>
Organization: American Registry for Internet Numbers
Newsgroups: arin.eng

I did a pretty thorough scouring of the RWhois mailing list archive held
on http://www.rwhois.net - not a recommended way to spend time.  :( 
Anyway, here's a rough outline of what goes on there:


o What info needs to be in the RWhois server?

People just don't know what information ARIN needs from them!  It's a
reoccurring theme.  This *really* needs to be documented.  People have
asked for a schema file, people have commented that ARIN doesn't know
what it wants!


o Why doesn't the server forward queries?

This doesn't work, and never has.  Apparently some people think that
*we're* going to be fixing this (joke's on them).  The IPv6 folks may
have a patch that not only adds IPv6, but also forwarding.

http://www.isi.edu/~sekiya/rwhois/rwhoisd-1.5.3-ipv6-1.diff.gz


o Does registering your RWhois server at ARIN do anything for you?

People want us to update our WHOIS output and IN-ADDR.ARPA based on the
contents of their RWhois servers.  In my mind, DNS should be delegated
at the lowest level possible, not the highest (ARIN).  I suppose we
could look at consolidating our RWhois and WHOIS information, though.


o Does APNIC or RIPE-NCC accept RWhois for reassignment information?

APNIC does not.  The RIPE response is a bit of a jab:

"the RIPE NCC doesn't use rwhois either. For much the same reasons as
APNIC and also the fact that no-one here seems to be interested in it
(our current system works)."

Ouch!


o How do I designate private information in my RWhois database?

There's a long, complicated answer to this that should be documented on
ARIN's site.


o Where do I register my RWhois server?

Need to document this, and probably how the forwarding of e-mails
actually works.  Also, the e-mail in our documentation
"rwhoisreg at internic.net" does not exist anymore.


o How does ARIN use the RWhois information?

Need to document the actual process of using RWhois to verify space
utilization for the customer, unless this is some secret.



Other stuff:

There is a Perl module for RWhois, written by David Blaka over at NSI:

ftp://ftp.rwhois.net/pub/Net-Rwhois-0.04.tar.gz

There is constant wondering why RWhois is used, and not something more
widely accepted (LDAP, whatever).  

Personally, I think using standard HTTP/CGI/HTML as a protocol/output
and standardizing the schema to be used by such would be a better
approach.  Look ma, no client!


--
Shane Kerr <kerr at arin.net>
Senior Software Engineer
American Registry for Internet Numbers
+1 703-227-9877