[ARIN-consult] Consultation on the Future of ARIN’s Directory Services (Updated)

[Adam Thompson]

> From: ARIN-consult <arin-consult-bounces at arin.net> On Behalf Of Roman
> Tatarnikov
[...]
> Nothing will be turned off tomorrow, so a year+ is a reasonable time to prepare.
>
> Once again, I want to emphasize that this is less of a conversation of whether to keep WHOIS, but more of when to turn it off.


I couldn't disagree more with both of your points, unless you're willing to measure 'when' in decades, not months.

Embedded software (I don't mean real-time control software, I mean all the supporting software that sits beneath the surface, that no-one sees directly) simply does not get updated within a year, or two, or ten - it's rare that it ever gets updated again after deployment.  You usually only update these custom-written cogs in the machine by replacing the entire machine.  I can think of three or four systems I've written [...support components for] that are still in production use today, that will just get turned off and thrown in the [digital] trash if/when port-43 service is discontinued.  I can't update any of them because I don't work for those companies any more, and the odds of those companies finding someone who can/will update my Perl code is approximately zero.  While the WHOIS service isn't central to the core monitoring function in any of them, it IS central to the display/output that people still use.
The scripts and utilities I've written at my current employer can be updated easily enough - but there's a lot more unsupported, unmaintained, yet critical production software out there than most people realize.

I don't see any reason at all why ARIN (and by extension the rest of the world) should discontinue port-43 WHOIS service entirely.  Change it, evolve it, replace it, perhaps even reduce its capabilities - those options should be on the table, but IMO not "turn it off forever", at least not on the time scale being discussed.

-Adam

Adam Thompson
Consultant, Infrastructure Services
MERLIN
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