> > Sean Donelan, May 14 1998 (three employers ago, so this should not be
> > taken as representing the official position any of my past, present or
> > future employers)> Yakhov, Elise, Mark, and Bill - 1994 as part of the RA
> project, bringers of the RAdb.This gets to the heart of the matter. It is now 8 years later and RADB is
not catching on. But during the same time period some other UMich people
worked on a more general purpose directory service called LDAP and that
one is catching on. LDAP technology can be made to do the job that we need
done and instead of having to create tools from scratch we can leverage a
lot of commercial tools to deal with the core functions.--Michael Dillon
The implementation (RAdb/RPSL/IRR/LDAP/SWIP/rwhois) is, to
a large degree, immaterial. The idea of publishing the
IANA/RIR/ISP reserved pool in a tagged format that is machine
parsable is the key. That we are unable to get to that point
is telling.
Its fairly easy to identify the IANA reserved /8 blocks.
Its harder to identify the RIR reserved space (space delegated
to RIRs that is not yet delegated to downstreams).
Harder yet, identifying ISP reserved space (space delegated to
ISPs that is not yet delegated to downstreams/endsystems).
You should ask yourself, why is it important at one level and
not important elsewhere? If you want a comprehensive map of
IP space not in active use, then make the compelling case
for it and build the tools that are so easy to use, everyone
will adopt them.
I've not seen a compelling case for just the IANA and not the
RIRs or just the IANA and RIRs but not the ISPs. I've seen
a compelling case for -EVERYONE- to participate in tracking
IP space in use, but the tools that cover the range of useage
are jsut not here. LDAP is not the cureall. Its a tool and
some folks can make it work. Its too much overhead for most
folks and for some parts of the delegation heirarchy.
Now we could have the debate on -WHY- ldap/whois is considered
so important. The applications use things like DNS mappings and
routing announcements. These are critical for network operations.
ldap/whois are not.
--bill