On 22 Sep 2014, at 10:45, Roland Perry <roland@internetpolicyagency.com> wrote:
the mechanisms you mention should be revisited as part of a process of recasting IANA's oversight.
Good point. Though I don't care enough about that to feed it in to the current discussion on IANA oversight. Maybe someone else does.
What does the enquirer do when the holding entity mentioned (eg on IANA's list of /8's no longer exists (Like the UK's Department of Social Security).
Well, we both know that for this specific case Roland the holding entity does still exist. It just has a different name. To answer in more general terms for these sorts of questions, IANA could say "We issued FOO/8 to BAR on DATE and here's the contact info we got at the time. We understand that FUBAR is the current address holder and contact for FOO/8. For FOO/16 or FOO/24, that's legacy space which is now overseen by the RIRs and $RIR for the address block in question." BTW, I'm still struggling to understand why real engineers would need to care about the name of the organisation that holds some address space. If Bad Things are happening with 51/8 (say) I doubt it matters if the address holder is called the Department of (Health and) Social Security or the Department for Work and Pensions.