New Whois Display Format

[Cathy Murphy]

On Tue, 12 Mar 2002, Dave Barger wrote:

> Question:
> 
> Currently, when doing a Whois query, and the netblock is not found,
> Whois will display the info for the ISP's large netblock allocation from
> which the netblock originates. 
> 
> Will the format of this output change?  This is important, in that our
> automation looks for the "NON-PORTABLE" character string on the page as
> an indication that a netblock has no specific Whois entry. 

Yes, the format will change somewhat, but mostly on newer records. That
information is currently inserted based on an instruction in the ISP
network request template, and a comment is added to the network
registration record if the requestor indicates that the addresses are to
be "non-portable". So, all existing records containing this comment will
retain this comment and will show up in a query for the network
registration record. 

However, the new templates will no longer ask for this item of
information. During the template re-design process, it was decided that
the whole notion of portability was being misunderstood. New network
requests can still insert this into the comment field if they so choose,
but we are now providing another mechanism to determine the type of
address space being issued or sub-delegated.

Each network registration record will now contain the label "Can
Sub-Delegate:", followed by Y for yes or N for no. All ARIN allocations
and reallocation SWIPs will indicate that those addresses can be further
sub-delegated. All ARIN end-user assignments and reassignment SWIPs will
indicate no sub-delegation. 

Hope this clarifies the situation. Thanks for your feedback.

Regards,

Cathy Murphy <cathym at arin.net>
Principal Software Engineer
American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN)
+1 703 227 9875