RWHOIS Update

[R.P. Aditya]

I second Mark's comment. I also want to mention a few specific things that
might help or warrant discussion:

On Wed, Sep 26, 2001 at 01:03:47PM -0400, Mark Kosters wrote:
> Additionally on the support side, it would be helpful if howtos and 
> registration interfaces where clearly documented and supported for people to 
> link in their servers. Since the documentation is lacking, there are lots of 
> howto questions on the rwhois mailing list from those members who setup
> their servers. I feel their pain.

The most difficult thing about setting up a rwhois server that I faced was
trying to figure out the minimum amount of information ARIN needed on a
per-allocation basis. It would be ideal if ARIN had a note about which fields
were required in an rwhois record. My "schema", if it helps, was as follows
(The ID field was a rowid from the SQL table this data was kept):

network:Class-Name:network
network:ID:DNAI-BLK-2-1395
network:Auth-Area:216.15.0.0/17
network:Handle:DNAI-BLK-2-1395
network:Network-Name:DNAI-BLK-2-1395
network:IP-Network:216.15.97.5/32
network:In-Addr-Server:207.181.194.14
network:In-Addr-Server:207.181.193.2
network:IP-Network-Block:216.15.97.5 - 216.15.97.5
network:Organization;I:R.P. Aditya
network:State:CA
network:Country-Code:US
network:Tech-Contact;I:blah at grot.org
network:Created:1999-04-20 10:46:56
network:Updated:2001-08-25 14:59:19

ARIN did subsequently use the data presented in this format for a new block,
so I guess it was good enough. It would be nice for those setting up new
rwhois servers to know definitively.

> Techincally, I think ARIN can best help its members use RWHOIS is to provide 
> RWHOIS with a better backend that allows for an easier way for members to 
> maintain their own data. mkdb is way too complicated for most people to use.

I addressed this by writing a few perl scripts that took the output of the SQL
data we collected and transformed it into a form suitable for mkdb on a
nightly basis. Since then (2 odd years), I'm starting to think that a better
direction to move is toward making rwhois more like LDAP, or better yet having
rwhois replaced by LDAP. I am still a LDAP newbie and would welcome knowing
the difficulties of making that transition. The main "problem" I see with LDAP
is to define an attribute "IP-Network" that can be searched in more than a
purely regexp fashion...

However, even v1.5.3 of rwhoisd that is still running as of 2+ years ago
worked far, far better than SWIP ever did or will.

Thanks,
Adi

> 
> Mark
> 
> On Wed, Sep 26, 2001 at 11:36:08AM -0400, ginny listman wrote:
> > 
> > At the ARIN Open Policy and Member Meeting in San Francisco (2-4 Apr 2001)
> > there was consensus that RWHOIS was in dire need of repair.  This echoed
> > similar sentiments that had been raised on various mail lists.  In
> > response to this desire, work begun on "fixing" RWHOIS.
> > 
> > On September 6, ARIN's Engineering Department announced the release of a
> > beta version of the RWHOIS software.  Details are at:
> > 
> >     http://www.arin.net/mailinglist/dbwg/0153.html
> > 
> > Since that time, there has been approximately 30 downloads from our ftp
> > site.  I have receive only one comment from someone who had problems
> > compiling the software.
> > 
> > My questions to the community are:
> > 
> > 1. Is RWHOIS an option for your company to replace SWIP?
> > 2. If you haven't download it yet, do you plan on downloading at a later
> > time?  Are you busy establishing a test site?
> > 3. If you have downloaded it, have you done any testing?  Have you found
> > any bugs?  Can you make any recommendations for improvement?
> > 4. Is investing in RWHOIS development a good allocation of ARIN
> > Engineering resources?
> > 
> > These issues will be discussed at the ARIN Member Meeting scheduled for
> > late October in Miami.  However, discussing these questions now will help
> > facilitate that discussion.  Please send all responses to dbwg at arin.net.