February 2016 - db-wg - mailman.ripe.net

<auto-dbm@ripe.net> is slow this afternoon.
by RIPE Database Administration 16 May '18

16 May '18

Dear Colleagues, Because of a very high level of use this afternoon, the response time of <auto-dbm(a)ripe.net> is longer than normal. I have made contact with those who are responsible and I expect the situation to improve as the machine works through the queue. Please be patient. Obviously we at the RIPE NCC Database Group are continuously working to make the performance of the database as good as possible. However, we cannot make improvements in zero time. We thank you for your co-operation up to now and we ask for your continued co-operation so that everyone receives the best possible service. If you have anymore questions, please contact <ripe-dbm(a)ripe.net>. Regards, Ambrose Magee ____________________________ RIPE Database Administration.

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WG Chairs Selection
by Piotr Strzyzewski 16 Nov '16

16 Nov '16

Dear DB-WG Members As agreed during DB-WG session at RIPE69 Meeting in London on 06.11.2014, the WG Chair Selection procedure is executed at yearly intervals. This means that it is about time to run it for the very first time. This is the call for interested parties. Interested parties have 2 weeks to make their interest known on this mailing list. All members of the community are encourage to make a discussion and express their approval or otherwise of the presented candidates. After two weeks the chairs will declare consensus. Since there is a limit of 3 co-chairs, if at the end of the discussion phase there will be more than 3 proposed co-chairs then a call will be made for any of the candidates to withdraw. If there still will be more than 3 candidates then names will be put into a hat and the first three names drawn from the hat will take on the role of chairs for the next 12 months. All three of present co-chairs expressed their interest in being co-chairs for another term. All the best, Job, Nigel & Piotr -- gucio -> Piotr Strzyżewski E-mail: Piotr.Strzyzewski(a)polsl.pl

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increase daily db dump frequency?
by Job Snijders 15 Mar '16

15 Mar '16

Hi RIPE NCC, WG, I have a use-case in which secondaire NRTM mirrors can't easily reseed from the data stored at ftp.ripe.net:/ripe/dbase/ because the intermediate NRTM mirror retains less history than the actual delta between when the dump was made and the current serial. In other words, if I want to reseed an IRR instance I have to do so before lunch (UTC), because after lunch the delta usually is too large. This can be mitigated if the dump files in ftp.ripe.net:/ripe/dbase/split are refreshed more often then once a day. Would it be possible to dump every 6 hours instead of every 24 hours? Kind regards, Job

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objection to RIPE policy proposal 2016-01
by Ruediger Volk 11 Mar '16

11 Mar '16

Dear colleagues, I object to passing the policy as proposed. There is no serious need for the policy, and at this time and under curent circumstance it would actually be harmful. I believe that the supposed good intentions would be better served by other actions, and the policy focussing on enforcement is ill advised. I understand that the current implementation of the RIPE database allows legacy holders to enter abuse-c attributes for their legacy resources if that's currently not possible the required extension of the database should be discussed (in the approprioate wg) and implementation would NOT require the PDP (as more drastic changes have been done to the database - and that extension hardly would contradict existing policy). No PDP is needed to send friendly invitations to legacy holders to populate their data objects with abuse-c information; I'm sure asking the RIPE NCC to do this would not create an undue burden or serious problem. Enhancing the invitations with some additional information potentially helpful to the recipients could be considered too: - some hints/guidance about expected use and support of that mailbox (active members of the abuse handling community probably will NOT be the typical recipient! and no injuries are expected if any community member sees that information:-) - specific suggestions what to put into the abuse-c field (whatever the RIPE NCC might use to extrapolate abuse-c from existing data) The working group should contribute helpful information to be included. I'm quite certain running a second invitation campaign would be even less of a problem and effort for RIPE NCC; I cannot predict how much the information provided in a later campaign can be improved based on feedback and experience from an earlier one. You may argue, that such more friendly approach could have been used also earlier - and I would very much agree and I certainly complained and suggested that at least the forced population of missing abuse-c should be postponed until friendly information was made available. Now we do NOT HAVE TO repeat past errors... Specifically with legacy resource holders it would be a good idea for RIPE community and NCC to address them with an inviting and helpful approach; as there is a sad history of seemingly coercive and unfriendly communications towards legacy holders. REPEATING the error now - even considering the much lower number of relevant records - is however actually MORE SERIOUS in DAMAGING the CREDIBILITY of the working group (and as a consequence the RIPE NCCs position) because of the accumulated history. Repeated requests for information on supposed use und handling of abuse-c has been answered by pointing out that it is required by a policy that was consciously created without any such information. The new policy proposal painfully fits into the sad observation that the anti-abuse working group as a community has constantly put effort into enforcing creation and population of abuse-c data but not (even tried) to provide to the rest of the world helpful explanations on requirements and expected handling at the requested mailboxes. That observations leads to the question whether the community is not able to come up with some helpful explanation or whether it does not care... :-( In both cases asking for enforcement does seem neither appropriate nor acceptable and means that the request cannot be taken serious - bad for the perception of RIPE and RIPE NCC activety by parties that are not heavily involved in the community processes. Consider the typical person confronted with a request to define abuse-c: how deeply is he involved with the anti-abuse working group (where a common understanding might exist - I consider myself only occassional observer and not a member and don't know)? Trying to close more quickly and on a more constructive perspective let me skip to elaborate here on my judgement: at close inspection the rationale and arguments look quite broken. The policy content does actually not matter that much - look for a sketch of a potential harmless implementation approach above in this message. What matters is appropriate use of the PDP (it can be abused!!!) and what are good goals of the working group and good ways of achieving them. The assumed good goals (as I understand it) are (a) improving quality of abuse-c information in order to (b) improve abuse reporting and report handling processes and (c) extending the abuse-c coverage for Internet number resources in the RIPE NCC registry The policy proposal references (a) and (b) quite explicitly; I took the liberty to interpolate (b) which actually seems to be the primary goal, and it looks like the working group decided that this will be helped by means of creating distinctly identified mailbox information to be put into abuse-c. The criterium for gauging (a) seems to be whether "improved data" actually helps "improve processing" (b) - what else? Creating abuse-c entries of better/good quality obviously depends on the recipient being appropriate and informed about expected potential messages and preparing to deal with them. Forcing creation of abuse-c in any other way is not going to create better quality but actually looses information (you loose track of which entries have the "quality of informed and [potentially] prepared recipient"). We have to assume that Internet number resource holders requested to establish abuse-c - usually are NOT focussed an abuse handling (different core business:-) - in many cases are not members of the anti-abuse working (and unlikely to have insight into undocumented potential consensus views of the working group or the larger abuse-c activist community) - in general willing to cooperate (we really should care for those and help them! ... yes, there are others - from "don't care" to "evil") For making a reasoned decision about the recipient for abuse-c and preparing for handling messages one obviously needs some understanding/explanation of what is expected. If no such helpful information is offered at the time of requesting abuse-c setup, many well intentioned parties will *something* (not really good "quality") to fill required fields and little motivation to followup will remain. If they care to ask for helpful information and the answer stays "this is required by policy, and it consciously declines to explain", they are likely to conclude that they have to submit to RIPE policies and the policy makers+process that cannot be taken serious... I note that for goal (b) of course some common understanding of expected use and handling for the abuse-c mailbox is a prerequisite on BOTH sides (senders also!) I do not expect to see formal, precise, and exhaustive definition of requirements and intended/expected use of abuse-c use - that would seem fairly impossible and certainly would not provide a practical answer to the issue. The working group needs to followup it previous abuse-c policy by starting to create practically useful explanations, before considering more "enforcement" (actually IMHO all enforcement activety should [have] be[en] postponed - potentially replaced by friendly invitations). It may take considerable effort to develope consensus on such documentation - but is it reasonable to rely on all relevant outside parties to have the first contact figure out completely on his own and explain to his management, consultants, service providers, etc... what needs to be done? (what aggregated cost and what "quality" implications do you expect?) It's ok to have working groups that just have internal fun between some birds of a feather. If a working group feels like making demands (e.g. policies) to a larger community it should also consider what support it needs to provide to serve the purposes of that larger community. Thanks for your attention and consideration. Ruediger Volk P.S.: Sorry, for a painfully long message. Trust me I had more painful time writing - and making it shorter would have been worse - with termination not secure:-) I hope that the painful length does not obscure - valid concern - constructive suggestions

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[training] RIPE NCC Training Courses April-June 2016
by Training Services 29 Feb '16

29 Feb '16

Dear colleagues, Our training team travels the RIPE NCC service region to deliver training courses to our members without any additional cost. Over the next few months, we'll be in Budapest, Tirana, Manchester, Lisbon, Bologna, Munich, Tallinn, Moscow, Vienna, Valletta, Reykjavik. Visit the following page to register and to check which training courses we are giving in your area: https://lirportal.ripe.net/training/courses The RIPE NCC delivers the following training courses: - LIR Training Course - RIPE Database Training Course - Basic IPv6 Training Course - DNSSEC Training Course - 2 days Advanced IPv6 Training Course - 2 days BGP Operations and Security Training Course For more information visit: https://www.ripe.net/support/training/courses With kind regards, Rumy Spratley-Kanis Training Services Manager

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RIPE DB services downtime
by Thiago da Cruz Pereira 19 Feb '16

19 Feb '16

Dear working group, Later today, we’re going to restart our servers to apply a patch. A short downtime to updates is expected and queries will not be affected. Kind regards, Thiago da Cruz Software Engineer - Ripe Database Team

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RIPE NCC to set abuse-c for remaining organisation with ASNs or other resources allocated or assigned by the RIPE NCC
by Tim Bruijnzeels 19 Feb '16

19 Feb '16

Dear working groups, As you know all organisations that have internet number resources allocated or assigned by the RIPE NCC need to have an abuse-c attribute according to policy 2011-06. The following implementation plan was communicated for this policy: https://labs.ripe.net/Members/kranjbar/implementation-details-of-policy-201… Phase 1 of this plan was completed in December 2013, setting up abuse-c for then existing LIRs. Phase 2 of this plan was completed for organisations holding sponsored PI resources in November 2014. However, since then LIRs and end-users have been responsible for ensuring that an abuse-c exists for their organisation. In practice it has proven difficult to enforce this, since abuse-c is not a mandatory attribute in the RIPE DB schema, and as a result new cases where organisations do not have an abuse contact have been created. There is an important change in the implementation we would like to do – based on our experiences thus far – which would like the community's mandate on. We propose to use the end-user organisation's email address instead of the sponsoring LIR email address. We believe there are valid reasons for this change, but of course if this suggested change is controversial we would encourage discussing it in the anti-abuse working group. Ideally, we need to have a decision on this by early January so that we can prepare the work. 1) Prevent NEW cases We want to ensure that no new cases will be created as follows: = Since 1 March, the new member application form already provides much better integration with the RIPE Database - because of this an abuse contact is now created whenever a new LIR is activated - it can be modified the LIR, e.g. using web-updates, but not removed = We are currently adapting the new create organisation webupdates form to include abuse-c by default allowing the user to: - reference an existing abuse-c role object, or - enter an email address to create an abuse-c role for the organisation (using the same maintainer) = We are also adapting the edit organisation webupdates form to always suggest adding an abuse-c contact if it's not present = We plan to extend the new request forms: - check that an end-user organisation has abuse-c before it can be used - if not, refer to the edit form for the organisation where it will be easy to add reference an existing abuse contact, or create a new object 2) Resolve remaining EXISTING cases Originally the idea for phase 2 was to use the sponsoring LIR's email address in case the end-user organisation was unresponsive to requests to set their own abuse contact. However, since then policy 2012-08 has been implemented and nowadays the sponsoring LIR, and its abuse contact, can be found through the sponsoring-org attribute. Also, the RIPE NCC found that using the sponsoring organisation's email address leads to a number of issues: - end-users have no incentive to set their own abuse-c, rather then letting abuse questions go to their sponsor, so the majority remains unresponsive - in case an end-user has resources from more than one sponsor it is ambiguous which sponsor's email should be used - many LIRs were unpleasantly surprised by finding their email address in the abuse-c of the organisation they sponsor - in case LIRs no longer wish to sponsor resources, or when they are returned, existing references to their email in the end-user abuse-c are not cleaned up We would therefore like to propose a change to the implementation plan when addressing the remaining cases. Today, in case no abuse contact is set, users of the database will resort to using the organisation's default email. Therefore, adding a dedicated abuse-c role object using this email address, doesn't cause any noticeable new effects on organisations. It may well be the correct email address to use for an organisation, and no action would be required. However, it *enables* an organisation to use a different email address for abuse questions if appropriate. We would like to email remaining LIRs, and end-user organisations and sponsoring LIRs on Monday 1 February, giving them until Monday 15 February to set their abuse contact. We realise that this means we would have another delay, but we believe that it would be unwise to do this change over the end of year holiday period, and to ensure that we can give proper support to questions we want to avoid doing this at the same time as the start of the year invoicing. Please let us know what you think. Kind regards, Tim Bruijnzeels Assistant Manager Software Engineering RIPE NCC Database Group

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Question about RIPE Database
by Ricardo Cukier 15 Feb '16

15 Feb '16

Hi. I am using the following FTP files to identify IPs per Country: ftp://ftp.arin.net/pub/stats/arin/delegated-arin-extended-latest ftp://ftp.afrinic.net/pub/stats/afrinic/delegated-afrinic-latest ftp://ftp.apnic.net/pub/stats/apnic/delegated-apnic-latest ftp://ftp.lacnic.net/pub/stats/lacnic/delegated-lacnic-latest ftp://ftp.ripe.net/ripe/stats/delegated-ripencc-latest ftp://ftp.apnic.net/pub/stats/iana/delegated-iana-latest While doing some searchs on the web, I found a few IP Addresses that are not included in those files, for example, 2.190.0.0 however, when i searched on the Web Database (see attached screenshot), it was found as an IRAN subnet and assigned by RIPENCC. Why I am unable to see this subnet in the files? Am I doing the download of the incorrect files? Can someone please help me to identify whats the best process to get the correct list of IPs/subnets per country? -- Best Regards, Ricardo Cukier

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Proposal to limit the use of the RIPE-NCC-RPSL-MNT on mnt-by
by Tim Bruijnzeels 11 Feb '16

11 Feb '16

Dear working group, There is an open action point on us regarding the use of the RIPE-NCC-RPSL-MNT maintainer: https://www.ripe.net/ripe/mail/archives/db-wg/2015-May/004626.html > I'd like to ask RIPE NCC to provide the group with an implementation > plan and a timeline on how to prevent the RIPE-NCC-RPSL-MNT mntner from > being used to authenticate updates to an object after the object has > been created. We also ask that the RIPE NCC look into cleaning up > existing references to RIPE-NCC-RPSL-MNT and tell us their plan. Note that there is an ongoing an important parallel discussion about the authorisation of out-of-region IRR objects in general. But this is specifically about the use of 'RIPE-NCC-RPSL-MNT' on "mnt-by:". As long as we do have RIPE-NCC-RPSL-MNT, there are things we can improve and we want to propose the following to working group: 1) implement a business rule to prevent that this maintainer is used as 'mnt-by' Submitting an object that includes 'mnt-by: RIPE-NCC-RPSL-MNT' would result in a hard error, with a message like: "The RIPE-NCC-RPSL-MNT is used to authorise the creation of out-of-region aut-num and route(6) objects, but may not be used as 'mnt-by'" This is fairly trivial to implement, provided of course that the working group agrees to this. 2) remove the maintainer from existing objects There are roughly 2000 objects that are maintained by 'RIPE-NCC-RPSL-MNT' only, and about 10000 objects that are maintained by 'RIPE-NCC-RPSL-MNT' and at least one other maintainer. In the first case we propose to lock the object, i.e. set 'mnt-by: RIPE-NCC-LOCKED-MNT', and send out a custom notification to any contacts on the object explaining that the object has been locked to prevent a hijack of the object, and that ripe-dbm(a)ripe.net can be contacted to unlock the object. In the second case we propose to leave the remaining maintainer and send out a custom notification informing contacts on the object that the "RIPE-NCC-RPSL-MNT" has been removed to prevent a hijack of the object, and listing which maintainer(s) remain. Technically this is not difficult either, but it can result in a lot of questions. Therefore we prefer to do this in batches to make sure that we can process possible follow up requests to ripe-dbm(a)ripe.net properly. For reference we used a similar approach when dealing with locking the old MD5 passwords earlier this year. Provided that the working group agrees with this, we expect this can be done in the space of a few weeks after the business rule is implemented. Kind regards, Tim Bruijnzeels Assistant Manager Software Engineering RIPE NCC Database Group

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Implementation proposal descr line
by Tim Bruijnzeels 11 Feb '16

11 Feb '16

Dear working groups, Following discussion in this group it was decided that the RIPE NCC should stop enforcing that the first "descr:" attribute of resource objects reflects the name of the organisation, for resources that it alloced or assigned. This practice has been place for a long time, but now that all such objects have a reference to an organisation object and the RIPE NCC ensures that this reflects the resource requests, this is no longer needed. Furthermore it was decided that the RIPE NCC should clean up existing organisation names in "descr:" attributes in order to: (1) avoid confusion about where the organisation name should be found; (2) avoid that the names here are different from the name of the actual organisation; (3) make it very clear which attributes are verified by RIPE NCC, and which attributes are not. Hereby the RIPE NCC would like to propose an implementation plan for these changes. We invite the working group to review and discuss if needed. As soon as the working group co-chairs formally call consensus, we can proceed to implement shortly. Implementation proposal: ======================== = Change "descr:" to an 'optional multiple' attribute We believe that the working group concluded that it would be appropriate to make "descr:" optional. The reason is that when the organisation name is cleaned up, there may be no description lines left. The working group considered whether the attribute should be 'single optional', but there seemed to be no strong preference for this, and it would have a bigger impact. Therefore we propose to go for the easier option of making it 'optional multiple'. Technically this change is not hard to do on the server side, but can impact users of the database because there may be no "descr:" attribute, and this can affect parsers. Because this can have an impact on automated systems the RIPE NCC will announce this change ncc-announce(a)ripe.net, and use a longer week staging period in the Release Candidate environment allowing users to test and update their systems. Dependent on formal consensus call we may be able to combine this with the upcoming release for deprecating "changed:" phase 3, to avoid delays. = Clean up existing "descr:" attributes where RIPE NCC enforced the organisation name The RIPE NCC will remove the "descr:" attributes that it has been enforcing. = Add "descr:" to allocation object editor in LIR Portal So that LIRs can edit this themselves. = Stop setting the "descr:" on new allocations or assignments done by the RIPE NCC We will leave "descr:" blank. It can be edited by the LIR or end-user later.

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