[consult] Feature request: whois incorporating an rwhois sub-query

[Leo Bicknell]

In a message written on Mon, Jul 23, 2007 at 12:13:09PM -0700, Owen DeLong wrote:
> Personally, I think this is the incorrect solution to the problem, but,
> given that the community seems to oppose the correct solution
> (the implementation of policy requiring that RWHOIS servers used
> for ARIN policy compliance be visible to the internet), I would support
> this alternative under the current circumstances.

Back in the day my employer did everything via rwhois, and did the
right thing and made the rwhois server available to the general
public.  About 5 years ago they converted from using rwhois to SWIP
for one very simple reason.

The ARIN rwhois server did not follow referrals.

If someone looked up part of our block the answer they always got
from ARIN was 1.2.3.4/16, our parent block and NONE of the
subdelegations.  We actually wanted them to get the subdelegations
so simple abuse issues could be handled by our customers (since
many were responsible ISP's) rather than hitting our abuse desk.

However, since at the time no clients followed referrals, and the
ARIN server did not follow them either a project was done to move
everything to SWIP and retire the rwhois server.  I don't think we
were the only ISP with this issue.

I strongly agree with Owen that rwhois servers need to be available
to the general Internet 24x7x365, and that ARIN should test for
that and weigh the availability in evaluating new requests from an
applicant.  However I don't think that having the ARIN server follow
referrals will make much difference with that problem, and it may
fix things such that many more people will use rwhois.

The situation is somewhat better now in that some popular clients 
seem to follow referrals now.  However, that being the case makes it
even siller that ARIN's server will not.

Please follow rwhois referrals.  Please support CIDR style queries.

-- 
       Leo Bicknell - bicknell at ufp.org - CCIE 3440
        PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/
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