[dbwg] parent org idea

[william at elan.net]

  I've had an idea for a while that it could be usefull for ARIN to allow 
one organization id to specify a "parent" organization id. 
  Basicly there are many instances I find where one organization has 
multiple ARIN organization ids (sometimes even a dozen or more!) and it is 
getting rather difficult to trace this all. Some companies end up with 
multiple ids because of mergers, some do this on purpose, but in general 
it would be good idea to be able to determine with certainty that this is 
the same company and for large companies it may also be usefull to be able
to add their offices in different cities/regions (which often act almost 
independent) or subsidiaries under their own org allowing local people 
there to manage aspects of ip information and administration (as far as 
ARIN whois, swips, etc) but still allowing one overall main account with 
ARIN.
  The database change here would be very simple - add "parent orgid" field
organization table. There would probably also needs to be some whois changes
to allow ">" query to show child organizations. But overall I don't think
technically this is that difficult.
 What do you all think of this idea?

BTW - 
I'm brining this up now in part because ARIN has decided to link 
"ReferralServer" field to orgnization table and this would mean that 
organizations must decide to either have rwhois server for all their 
netblocks or none. By setting up system as described above, an 
organization that wished to maintain rwhois server for some ip blocks 
and not for others can setup separate orgid with different referral-server
settings.

-- 
William Leibzon
Elan Communications Inc. 
william at elan.net