[ppml] Policy Proposal: SWIP support for smaller than /29assignments

[Joe Maimon]

Michael,

Thanks for your feedback.



michael.dillon at bt.com wrote:

>>Rationale:
>>With increasing frequency of smaller than /29 assignements to 
>>customers, the ability for ISP's to utilize SWIP or RWHOIS as 
>>a single comprehensive source of their utilization data 
>>should be supported. To implement this policy change, ARIN 
>>SWIP would need to no longer reject SWIP templates smaller then /29.
> 
> 
> 1. Nothing that ARIN does or does not do has any effect on how an
>    ISP uses their own utilization data.

ARIN serves a constituency, the proposal suggest the constituency would
be better served by this change, which is likely trivial.

> 
> 2. The WHOIS protocol, WHOIS directory, whois tool, Share WHOIS
>    Information Project (SWIP) and Remote WHOIS (RWHOIS) are all
>    ancient and amateurish pieces of work. The average college 
>    student building an application with Django could do a far
>    better job at designing a whois service given the base
>    level of technology and training available today compared
>    to twenty (or more) years ago. We should be putting less into
>    the whois directory, not more.

If they are irrelevant, then this change is even more trivial.

What goes into SWIP should be another topic other than the proposal
which discusses which size blocks are allowed in swip.



> 
> 3. There has been some recent discussion about clarifying the
>    purpose of the whois directory and how it should be used.
>    It is premature to extend the use of whois until we sort
>    out the larger issues.

If we paused everything everytime there was a discussion about
something, I personally believe nothing would ever get done.

> 4. Whois was created by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
>    (DARPA) to track who was using their ARPAnet research network
>    so that local network managers, and the larger ARPAnet community
>    could justify budget funding for their work. Somewhere along
>    the way, the network name changed to Internet, the base protocols
>    to TCP/IP and the network purpose from research to everything
>    that human beings want to communicate about. But whois has never
>    been reviewed or changed much beyond adapting it to TCP/IP and
>    adding some referral capabilities (RWHOIS). 
> 
>    Clearly there is no longer a need to count users in order to justify
>    Federal research funding. Outside of net folklore, there has never
>    been any agreement on the scope and/or purpose of the whois directory
>    other than in the negative, e.g. the whois directory is not a place
>    to harvest emails to send out advertising.
> 

I think that whois serves a few very nice purposes. But thats off-topic
to the proposal which suggests allowing those who choose to use it, to
use it better.

>    Until we can agree on what whois is for, it is premature to extend
>    its use in any way.
> 
> --Michael Dillon
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