[dbwg] Displaying Rwhois information as separate field in whois output

[william at elan.net]

  As some of you know ARIN setup "rwhois design group" in January to
find ways to improve ISP-maintained reassigments which is currently 
done through rwhois. About 10 persons participated in that and problems 
and possible solutions were discussed. While no agreement on futher 
actions was reached, it did provide some important feedback to ARIN on 
what they could do and yesterday I was asked to write down futher on 
idea I had and ARIN has reported that it would not be too difficult 
to do (can be done in 60-90 days). 
  I do want to mention thogh that while there were disagreements 
on several issues, there was also clear agreement on one particular 
issue - this is to FIX RWHOIS ROOT SERVER. While its not the kind of issue 
that can be put in the proposal, I'm hoping that since ARIN staff has 
listened to what has been discussed, they understand that this is
something that everybody thinks must be done to improve rwhois.

Now my original idea was as follows:
> 4. Convert current comments into special reassigment contact and make it
> easy for automated software to determine where to get rwhois information
> as well as provide clear text indicating that reassigment info is coming
> out of database not maintained by ARIN

There are several ways to do it with various degree of complexity. One 
would be to simply add a "reassignment" field into either NETWORK or 
ORG and make modifications to ARIN whois server so it is displaying it 
as separate note regarding reassignments. I believe if its done this way, 
we may need to make an exception and allow "TECH" contact to be 
responsible for maintaining this particular field (especially for ORG).
There is also somewhat of a problem as I see it that there is no way to 
do special reassignment-only comments (but we could add additional 
"reassignment comment" field as well) and these I think are important in 
many cases for example to advertise about custom schema or to tell 
non-technical viewers of whois how to find reassignment contact through 
web interface (in reality > 50% of those accessing ARIN data have no idea 
what rwhois is!).

Another way is to do it as actual contact, which may require a little more 
time for ARIN to do and in the beginning (on actual conversion) may end up 
with multiple reassignment contacts in place where should have been only one
(for networks that have many ip blocks with rwhois server reference) but 
hopefully this would be fixed by the ISP itself and extra contacts removed.
For this option I actually create a proposal which is located at:
http://www.elan.net/~william/arin_proposal_rwhois_contact.htm

Except for part#6, this is mostly database-related and thus non-policy 
issue and does not necessarily need to be in a proposal (and for #6 
somebody else may already be working on a similar proposal). 

So if you are an ISP that maintains rwhois, please think about what 
you think would be best way to do it (as listed above) and post your 
comments to this list or otherwise be ready to have it discussed on
Memphis meeting.

Below follows my actual proposal from url above in text format, it is more 
complicated that what ARIN itself would like to do, but I personally 
think this is better.

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

Reassignment (Rwhois) Whois Contact Proposal

This proposal is trying to better address an issue with ISP-maintained 
reassignment information (rwhois servers).

Currently information on rwhois is displayed as comments in the whois and 
there are no standards on how these comments are entered which makes it 
difficult to futher parse the information. In addition it is often 
important to know who to contact regarding technical issues with 
ISP-maintained rwhois server and such information is difficult to obtain. 
There also no procedure that would allow for rwhois maintainer to modify 
information on rwhois and it can only be done through ISP main 
administrative contact which is sometimes an issue for large ISP with many 
ip blocks.

So to address the above it is proposed that:

   1. ARIN establish new "reassignment" contact. This contact should 
include same fields as other ARIN whois contacts and should be the contact 
of the person or technical group at the ISP that is responsible for 
maintaining rwhois server is other similar reassignment server.
   2. In addition to standard whois fields, new contact should include 
additional special reassignment field which should provide URN to the 
server that provides futher reassignment information. An example of this 
would be: rwhois://rwhois.someisp.net:4321
   3. Whois should display a note when reassignment contact is present 
that makes it clear that reassignment information is maintained by the ISP 
and can be found through its listed rwhois server or similar service.
   4. ISP may also use optional comments fields to provide additional 
information such as information on additional features of its reassignment 
server or pointer to schema used. It is recommended that comments at least 
include URL with link to website which can provide reassignment 
information so that it can be used by those who do not have direct access 
to rwhois or other appropriate reassignment client program.
   5. ARIN should attempt to convert all current rwhois comments into new 
reassignment contact. In this effort ARIN should contact all ISPs that 
have listed rwhois or other reassignment server in comments and try to 
obtain information on who is the correct contact responsible for 
maintaining such server. If ARIN is unable to get the exact information 
from the ISP, ARIN may substitute information from current technical or 
administrative contact when creating new reassignment contact.
   6. In the future when ARIN receives reports of reassignment server not 
answering to queries, ARIN may do its own tests for at least a month with 
at least 10 non-sequential queries and if there higher then 75% failure 
rate, ARIN should attempt to contact person or group as listed in the 
reassignment contact (first by email and then by phone) and if no response 
is received, ARIN should attempt to contact technical contact listed for 
the ip block to try to find resolution to the problem. If ARIN is unable 
to make proper contact with ISP or find resolution to a problem, ARIN may 
add a comment to reassignment contact indicating that listed reassignment 
server is "lame" similar to the way this is done for lame DNS servers.