[ppml] comments on 2004-8

[Michael.Dillon at radianz.com]

> >If we are going to be making modifications to this one,
> >then I think it is time to say that these announcements
> >and web accessible documents should be in a machine-parseable
> >format. Something like RSS could be used or even just a plain
> >XML page. The current IANA list of address ranges is not
> >machine parseable and is not consistent from range to range.
> >There is no good reason why the list of ranges produced by
> >IANA should be broken (or aggregated) on class A boundaries.
> >If they have this info in a database, then it should be
> >trivial to report it as an XML file.
> 
> As far as policy is concerned, I don't think that the details of the 
> formatting, etc., are that important.  I'd say that it is covered in 
> the "will establish administrative procedures" phrase.  (My comments 
> are related to the flow of the announcements, not the contents of the 
> announcements.)
> 
> IANA's choice of data format isn't an ARIN problem, so I wouldn't 
> attach that to this proposal in this arena.

This "arena" is not just for discussing ARIN policy text. That's
why I brought up the issue here. And while it is not appropriate 
for ARIN to make a policy telling IANA what to do, it is certainly
appropriate for any interested party to post to this list and
tell IANA to publish their data in a machine parseable format
such as RPSL or XML or both.

IANA is broke, let's fix it!

--Michael Dillon