[arin-ppml] Fraud or not?

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

On 2/16/2011 1:05 PM, Owen DeLong wrote:
> Output, sure. However, the web-based one is much stricter and less
> intelligent about parsing queries and THAT is the primary problem I'm
> having.
>
> Instead of realizing that the old "AS10912" query means the same
> thing to the user as the new arcane syntax "a 10912" (which the
> old version did just fine), the new version neither fails nor works
> consistently (or at least the behavior appears very inconsistent
> until you begin to understand an additional arcane set of rules).
>
> The actual result is:
>
> 	1.	Some command line clients do the translation for you.
> 		(good for them, but, not universal)
>
> 	2.	If you query ASnnnnn, then, whether you get a good
> 		result back or not depends on whether or not ASnnnnn
> 		is the handle for the resource. If I were to create
> 		an AS Number record, for example, named AS105,
> 		but, which was actually AS693, then, I would get
> 		the following odd mixture:
>
> 		Query				Result
> 		AS105				Record for AS693
> 		AS693				Nothing
> 		a 105				Record for AS105
> 		a 693				Record for AS693
>
> 		(Assuming that my client doesn't alter my queries
> 		unexpectedly).
>

I've noticed similar silliness, for example it's impossible to use whois
to query our org POC because it's so old that it has one of those 
"shorthand" ID's assigned back in the days where the whois maintainers
apparently were having a contest to see how short they could make an
ID.  You query it and it partial-matches dozens of others so it never
comes back with just the record.  You can only see it if you query for
the AS # and then you get both the org POC and the AS record.

> I shouldn't have to become an expert in whois arcana to survive
> navigating whois for simple everyday queries.
>

Sigh.  I suspect the only way of ever fixing this is for ARIN to dump 
the entire DB and have someone spend a couple months going through it 
hand-verifying all of the data for consistency in presentation.

Ted

> Owen
>
> On Feb 16, 2011, at 10:10 AM, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
>
>> So do I - but, I will say that once they finally get their web-based one
>> to work, it should not be too difficult to write a command line Perl
>> script that talks to their web server and outputs like the older command line tool did.
>>
>> Ted
>>
>> On 2/15/2011 11:41 PM, Owen DeLong wrote:
>>> I really wish ARIN would make the command line whois work as well as
>>> it used to instead of focusing all their energy on the (much less convenient
>>> much higher overhead from the user perspective) web-based one.
>>>
>>> Owen
>>>
>>> On Feb 15, 2011, at 9:03 PM, Scott Leibrand wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 8:48 PM, Ronald F. Guilmette
>>>> <rfg at tristatelogic.com<mailto:rfg at tristatelogic.com>>  wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>     www.robtex.com<http://www.robtex.com/>  says that AS10912 belongs
>>>>     to Internap.
>>>>
>>>>     whois.arin.net<http://whois.arin.net/>  says that there ain't no
>>>>     such AS.
>>>>
>>>>     So, should I file a formal report charging Internap with fradulent use
>>>>     of resources that are not actually assigned to them? Or is it more
>>>>     likely that ARIN has simply (and entirely) misplaced the WHOIS record
>>>>     for AS10912?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> It looks like it's only the traditional whois tool that is failing.
>>>> The web tool at arin.net<http://arin.net/>  reports it as part of
>>>> INTERNAP-BLK, which covers ASNs 10910 - 10913.
>>>>
>>>> http://whois.arin.net/rest/asn/AS10910/pft
>>>>
>>>> I suspect your message will be enough to get ARIN to fix the whois
>>>> port 43 service shortly. :-)
>>>>
>>>> -Scott
>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>
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>