Subject: exposing allocation policy externally

From: Mikael Abrahamsson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 07:59:46 +0200 (CEST)

I don't know if it has been discussed here earlier or if it was in another 
context.

I think it'd be of interest to standardize a way of "exposing" part of 
internal IPv6 policy to the rest of the world. What I'd like to achieve is 
the following:

Being able to expose to others who owns what IPs, if it's /128 per 
customer, /64, /56 or something else and if it's an end-user device 
(mobile phone or alike), a household, a company or some other way of 
showing approximate amount of users within the IP space.

If the IP space is allocated on a dynamic way (minutes/hours), 
semi-dynamic (weeks/months of customer usually having the same IP) or 
static ("never" changes), perhaps even having a "last-changed" time 
available.

Exposing geographical information of the customers in the IP space, 
preferrably with the standard allowing for both administrative 
(country/state/city) and coordinate information.

I would also like this to be multi-level, so if an ISP is handed a /32, 
they can hand out a /48 and say "this /48 is for a company" and then ALSO 
subdelegate this to the company so the company can provide more 
information. External parties should be able to decide which level(s) they 
want to trust.

Does this sound like madness or something that might be of use? What WG 
might be best suited to bring this idea to?

-- 
Mikael Abrahamsson    email: [email-masked]

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From: Jeroen Massar <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 09:59:45 +0200

On 2010-09-14 07:59, Mikael Abrahamsson wrote:
[..]
> might be best suited to bring this idea to?

What part can not be achieved with WHOIS/RPSL already?

Guess you would have to only introduce a few new tokens to get to what
you want.

The bigger issue though is just like WHOIS though: folks don't update.
And of course, folks will lie...

WHOIS is pretty meaningless for addresses and contacts already in quite
a number of cases, adding more data will only add more nonsense.

I am for that matter all in for having a 'HIDDEN' marker so that folks
can say 'this data is hidden' or 'unknown, and then get rid of all the
data which is nonsense.

Greets,
 Jeroen

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From: Mikael Abrahamsson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 10:12:17 +0200 (CEST)

> What part can not be achieved with WHOIS/RPSL already?

Why aren't people using WHOIS for DNSBL? Massive amount of questions are 
frowned upon by the people who run whois servers.

> And of course, folks will lie...

Absolutely, nothing is perfect.

> a number of cases, adding more data will only add more nonsense.

My idea wasn't to use WHOIS for this, I was more thinking in lines of 
reverse-DNS but in new structure (under arpa.) or something completely 
new.

I think there is a need to somehow publish this information and do it 
dynamically, and I don't think WHOIS is the way to go.

---

From: bill manning <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 01:18:48 -0700

On 14September2010Tuesday, at 1:12, Mikael Abrahamsson wrote:

> Why aren't people using WHOIS for DNSBL? Massive amount of questions are frowned upon by the people who run whois servers.
> 
> My idea wasn't to use WHOIS for this, I was more thinking in lines of reverse-DNS but in new structure (under arpa.) or something completely new.
> 
> I think there is a need to somehow publish this information and do it dynamically, and I don't think WHOIS is the way to go.

you mean something like this?

http://www.isi.edu/div7/publication_files/novel_use.htm

--bill

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From: Mikael Abrahamsson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 10:35:19 +0200 (CEST)

> http://www.isi.edu/div7/publication_files/novel_use.htm

Yes, that seems like a framework that my idea could fit into, absolutely.

---

From: Jeroen Massar <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 10:54:17 +0200

> frowned upon by the people who run whois servers.

I assume you mean queries instead of questions. They rate limit that
mostly though to avoid robots from querying all the person objects and
snarf the (email) address details.

> reverse-DNS but in new structure (under arpa.) or something completely new.
> 

Publishing policy in a consistent and parseable manner is a good idea
indeed.

Bill Manning's link (see his mail) shows something along the lines that
you are thinking about I guess, but instead of creating a new domain one
could also stuff it in the existing reverse DNS space similar to _spf
records are done on forward domains, thus eg
_policy.2.0.192.in-addr.arpa; but maybe a separate domain (and thus
unfortunately all the trust involved in delegating that and maintaining
it) is a better idea as then one can have a more specific for a certain
block.

Maybe it is time to convert WHOIS into rpsl.arpa, but storing
person/contact data that does not want to published there in the current
RIR whois services, thus just having policy information?

There is though a lot one can do with RPSL queries that won't be
feasible with DNS.

Greets,
 Jeroen