[dbwg] ReferralServer and ASNs

[william at elan.net]

  I've noticed that since introduction of ReferralServer as atribute of 
the ORG, number of ASNs also return ReferralServer as part of the output, 
for example:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
[william at sokol william]$ whois 16631 at whois.arin.net
[whois.arin.net]
OrgName:    Cogent Communications
OrgID:      COGC
Address:    1015 31st Street, NW
City:       Washington
StateProv:  DC
PostalCode: 20007
Country:    US

ReferralServer: rwhois://rwhois.cogentco.com:4321/

ASNumber:   16631
ASName:     COGENT-ASN
ASHandle:   AS16631
Comment:
RegDate:    2000-05-30
Updated:    2003-03-14

----------------------------------------------------------------------

  Now as you can guess not one of these rwhois servers actually returns
something when asked about ASN (in fact I don't think there is even
a schema defined for that, though it can be created and this can be 
treated similar to domain name).
  So the question is should this "ReferralServer" for ASNs be considered 
unfortunete side-effect and bug (i.e. should ARIN possibly modify whois
no to display ReferralServer with ASN objects) or should it possibly be 
considered a "feature"?
  I'm thinking its not exactly a bad idea to allow ISPs to display information
about its ASN and its routing policies (i.e. like route server entry but 
on the ISP side, rather then directly at radb), but I have reservations 
about if rwhois can be used for this (and we do have standard RPSL for 
such routing database and in fact several large ISPs do have their own 
routedb servers). 

What do others think should be done in regards to ReferralServer and ASN?

-- 
William Leibzon
Elan Networks
william at elan.net