[ppml] Bogons etc...

[Alec H. Peterson]

<looking into my PPML time machine>

We have been down these roads before.  There are liability concerns that 
ARIN must address regardless of the protocol used to distribute this 
information.  Nobody on this list aside from ARIN legal staff (if they are 
on the list) are qualified to render an authoritative opinion with respect 
to ARIN's legal exposure.  As an ARIN AC member, I will bring this issue up 
(generally) at the next AC meeting and if there is sufficient consensus 
among AC members we will request a legal opinion.

Now, on to operational considerations.  Does anybody remember ORBS?  They 
were DoS'ed off the 'net by spammers.  If ARIN starts running this type of 
service, there will be a _significant_ operational cost increase taken on 
by ARIN, because the DoS attacks will come, and they may come with such a 
volume as to completely render all of ARIN offline.

I do not suggest for a second that we should not implement such a directory 
simply for this reason, I merely bring it up so that the issue can be 
included in the larger discussion.  Clearly there are ways to help deal 
with the issue (such as doing an anycast distribution of the directory).

At any rate, I also think that this should be moved to the DBWG mailing 
list, as this really is an operational issue that specifically deals with 
the ARIN database.

Alec
Chair, ARIN AC