- db-wg - mailman.ripe.net

Cleanup of unreferenced person objects
by Denis Walker 23 Apr '07

23 Apr '07

Hi There has been some useful feedback already on this proposal. Perhaps I need to clarify some points and suggest some changes to the proposal. We have always wanted to keep the database as clean as possible. So whilst half a million extra person objects has no effect on the operation, we prefer them not to be there if they are serving no useful purpose. We have also been looking more closely at Data Protection issues recently. We have a number of points to discus with the Data Protection Task Force. But the bottom line is, we have to define the purpose(s) of the RIPE Database. We are only allowed to keep personal data in the database if it fits the defined purpose. Although we are only at the stage of drafting these definitions, it is difficult to see how unreferenced person objects could fit any definition that we finally agree on. As for e-mails, I have discussed the numbers with our IT operations guys. They are confident we can handle the worst case scenario with our mail servers. So I suggest we process the deletions with the normal notification procedure where e-mails are sent to any "notify:" addresses in the person objects and to the maintainers if maintained. We will use a modified notification text for this purpose. It will refer to a web page that explains why these person objects are being deleted. Regarding the issue of temporary unreferenced person objects. For example when someone is moving to a new company and de-references their person object from the old companies data and intends to reference it with the new companies data. The proposal allows for a (minimum) one month waiting period before deletion. It could be up to two months, depending on when it is de-referenced. If there is a feeling that this needs to be a longer period it can be extended. I hope this addresses the issues so far raised. Regards Denis Walker Database Group RIPE NCC

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Clean up of unreferenced person/role objects
by Denis Walker 23 Apr '07

23 Apr '07

Introduction ------------ According to our database consistency statistics program (dbconstat [1]) we currently have 460,573 unreferenced person/role objects [2]. Some of these may be maintained, but are still unreferenced. Any personal data not referenced by Internet resources do not fit within the purpose of the RIPE Database. They should not be stored in the RIPE Database beyond a reasonable 'work in progress' period. The RIPE NCC has had a mandate to delete these unreferenced person/role objects since RIPE 40: http://www.ripe.net/ripe/wg/db/minutes/ripe-40.html (2001) At RIPE 41, the Database Working Group agreed that "maintained objects will now be removed" and "gave a mandate to the RIPE NCC to continue with the cleanup process." http://www.ripe.net/ripe/wg/db/minutes/ripe-41.html (2002) The cleanup process of 2003 (http://www.ripe.net/db/news/unref-cleanup-200304.html) involved using a script to run periodic cleanups. This script was put in place. However, it failed about 18 months ago. Because of other priorities, we have not had the time to examine this issue again until now. The graph showing the increase in these unreferenced person objects [3] indicates that the cleanup script appeared not to be performing correctly. At the start of 2006, there were about 300,000 unreferenced person/role objects. Since then there has been a steady increase with a large increase of almost 50,000 in February 2007. The graph also shows a slightly higher rate of increases in these objects since February 2007. Because of the high number now of unreferenced person objects, we want to raise the issue with the community again and propose the below procedure to clean them up. Because redundant personal data is a serious data protection issue, we want to take a new approach to this in the future. Once the initial cleanup is in progress, we will create a new proposal for a new, regular cleanup procedure. This will be sent to the Data Protection Task Force [4] and then to the rest of the community. One time bulk cleanup procedure ------------------------------- Month 1 * Select 80,000 unreferenced person/role objects. Month 2 * Check selected person/role objects. * Those still unreferenced: o Delete using normal update process. o 2000 objects per update message. o Run updates overnight (Saturday/Sunday). o One update every 15 minutes. o This should avoid any unnecessary load on the servers. * Select next 80,000 unreferenced person/role objects. Month 3 * Repeat process until complete. Notes ----- This procedure will take about 6 months to clear the current backlog, not including the extra time that may be necessary due to the increases over that period. Because of the high numbers involved, we prefer NOT to send out individual e-mail notifications, either before or after deletion. This is to prevent a high load on our mail servers, especially in the event of a high number of bounced e-mails. This means that there will be no individual announcements to listed e-mail addresses before the deletion and none of the usual update notifications. This also means that even if the objects are maintained, the maintainer will not be notified directly about the deletion of their unreferenced person/role object. We will, however, announce the cleanup to the Working Group mailing lists and as a news item on our web site home page. The worst problem that can occur is that someone will enter a reference to their person/role object just as we delete it. However, as we are only deleting unreferenced person/role objects, the time needed to re-create them is minimal. We suspect that a very large proportion of the unreferenced person/role objects that we will be deleting are abandoned objects that are no longer used. References ---------- [1] dbconstat http://www.ripe.net/projects/dbconstat/index.html [2] current unreferenced person/role objects http://www.ripe.net/projects/dbconstat/html/cons-current.html [3] graph of unreferenced person object increase http://www.ripe.net/projects/dbconstat/cons-unrefpero.html [4] Data Protection Task Force http://www.ripe.net/ripe/tf/dp/index.html

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Updated RIPE Database Manuals
by Denis Walker 17 Apr '07

17 Apr '07

[apologies for duplicates] Dear Colleagues, We are pleased to announce the publication of three updated RIPE Database Documents. ripe-401 RIPE Database Query Reference Manual ripe-402 RIPE Database User Manual: Getting Started DRAFT RIPE Database Update Reference Manual Previously, the Query and Update Reference Manuals were part of ripe-252, The RIPE Database Reference Manual. The content has been thoroughly revised and updated, and we have also improved the wording to make it clearer. The Update Reference Manual also contains a lot of new content, reflecting many of the changes made to the database software over recent years. Because it is so long since this manual has been revised, the list of changes is considerable. It has not been possible to reflect all these changes in the first revision. This is why it is only released as a draft document at this stage. A second revision will take place after the RIPE 54 Meeting. Together, the Query Reference Manual and Update Reference Manual (currently in draft format) will completely obsolete ripe-252. You can find ripe-401 and ripe-402 at: http://www.ripe.net/ripe/docs/database.html The draft of the RIPE Database Update Reference Manual is available at: http://www.ripe.net/ripe/draft-documents/draft_db_manual.pdf Regards Denis Walker Database Group RIPE NCC

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Call for agenda items, DB-WG Meeting during RIPE54, Tallinn, EE
by Wilfried Woeber, UniVie/ACOnet 05 Apr '07

05 Apr '07

Dear DB-WG folks, the RIPE NCC will soon ask us to submit the draft agendas for the WGs. As I'll be out of office till April 18th, I'd like to distribute this Call for Agenda Items even before the Easter Holidays :-) Please submit (to the WG list or to me personally) your item requests or suggest topics for discussion to be included in the draft agenda! I plan to distribute the 1st version of the draft agenda around the 20th of April. The DataBase-WG meeting is scheduled for Friday morning, May 11, 2007. The overall RIPE meeting outline is already available at http://www.ripe.net/ripe/meetings/ripe-54/meeting-plan.html The list of plenary presentations scheduled may eventually be available at [- as of early April this page does not exist yet -] http://www.ripe.net/ripe/meetings/ripe-54/presentations/ See you in Estonia, Wilfried.

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RIPE NCC Network Maintenance 1700 UTC (1900 CEST) Thurday 5 April 2007 Postponed
by Mark Guz 05 Apr '07

05 Apr '07

Dear Colleagues, Due to the fact that the RIPE NCC will be closed tomorrow and Monday we have decided to postpone this maintenance until next Wednesday (11/04/07 ). Apologies for the inconvenience this may cause. If you have any questions please send them to ops(a)ripe.net Kind Regards Mark Guz Senior Engineer OPS/IT RIPE NCC Amsterdam

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Concerning the authentication for route object creation
by Hendrik T Voelker 04 Apr '07

04 Apr '07

Dear RIPE, dear Colleagues. I'd like to discuss a topic which most likely has already been discussed several times - only I have not seen that so far. If so, please excuse the 100th time being asked about it and just point me to results of these discussions. Anyway, here we go: According to http://www.ripe.net/info/faq/db/route-creation-IP-space-check.html if it is found that there is no exact matching route object already in existence in the RIPE DB, the less specific route is examined. If one is found deciding for authentication are then contained mnt-routes, mnt-lower or mnt-by fields. What annoys me here is, that holes are completely disregarded, meaning so even if because of defined holes the route object is not authoritative for a network, nonetheless it's authentication data is used. As we have several larger aggregated routes and additional some routes for IP allocations that have a status of "ALLOCATED UNSPECIFIED" we have to update our route objects to include maintainers for other companies so that they become able to maintain PI allocations. If the authentication process would regard holes all we would have to do would be defining a hole once, and not have to change the mnt-routes for a network for every provider change. This might ease the daily business of us all slightly. Cheers Hendrik -- Hendrik T. Voelker HTV5-RIPE EMEA Registrar Team Verizon Deutschland GmbH Sebrathweg 20 D-44149 Dortmund GERMANY http://www.verizonbusiness.com/de/ tel +49-231-972-1565 fax +49-231-972-2587 PubKey 1024D/92479A5D EC1B 76F2 D69D 11C6 2611 5CD1 5269 9351 9247 9A5D Verizon Deutschland GmbH - Sebrathweg 20, 44149 Dortmund, Germany - Amtsgericht Dortmund, HRB 14952 - Gesch�ftsf�hrer: Donald Badoux - Vorsitzender des Aufsichtsrats: Mark Kearns

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RIPE NCC Network Maintenance 1700 UTC (1900 CEST) Thurday 5 April 2007
by Mark Guz 03 Apr '07

03 Apr '07

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 [apologies for duplicates] Dear Colleagues, On Thursday 05/04/2007, between 17:00 and 19:00 (UTC), the RIPE NCC will carry out planned maintenance work on our core network infrastructure. RIPE NCC services will be temporarily unavailable during this period. We apologise for any inconvenience that this may cause. This work is due to the deployment of a new section of dark fibre between two of our PoPs If you have any questions about this, please send an e-mail to: ops(a)ripe.net Regards Mark Guz Senior Engineer Operations Department RIPE NCC http://www.ripe.net -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (Darwin) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFGEhqgl42z2L2N9gERAofHAKClFauaor8xhKENLD4dp5PSfN9MFQCfZhCh D1RBdhQbWlox3dtzLzLPvLE= =g9jU -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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NOC / Lookinglass Information in the RIPE DB
by Jeroen Massar 29 Mar '07

29 Mar '07

Hi, I am probably approaching this from the wrong way, in that case point me at the right way so that I can do it in the correct way. It needs discussion first anyway, so here we go: RIPE currently has a couple of projects going on which help in solving network connectivity issues, amongst those of course the really nice RIS tool (I love BGPPlay btw :) and the debogon projects. The latter project can be used by a network admin to check if that, to be debogonized network, is reachable. This does not help with network problems that might occur at other places. Now what if we could have an object in the RIPE registry that would explain us where to find Looking Glasses that are applicable for a prefix? I am thinking of something in the area of the following: route: 192.0.2.0/24 descr: Documentation Network origin: AS23456 lookingglass: http://noc.as23456.net/lg/ reachable: icmp:192.0.2.1 reachable: http://192.0.2.1 mnt-by: RIR-MNT source: RIPE # Filtered One could debate that maybe putting the proposed 'lookingglass' and 'reachable' addresses might be better suited in the ASN object. Another option to store this data would be to create a new 'noc' object and to have the details in there. The above information, when available, could then easily allow operators who have a problem with a certain prefix to find the lookingglass which allows them to look at the problem from the remote angle, without having to contact that NOC. This will give people with network problems a better insight, which allows for better reporting of the issue, and thus hopefully faster resolution of issues. There are indeed resources (eg www.traceroute.org) which list these items, but it is much more scalable and reliable to have it in the RIPE registry. What do folks think about this? Useless? Useful? Nonsense? ??? :) Greets, Jeroen

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whois-server friendly client programming
by Henning Brauer 02 Mar '07

02 Mar '07

Hi, I am writing a tool to generate OpenBGPD filters from the policy specification in aut-num objects. Naturally, this involves sending a lot of queries to the whois servers: -one for the aut-num in question -one for every as-set given in the policy -one for every member of these as-sets, and recursively for their members, until we're down to an all-aut-num list -for each aut-num, a query for the routes it exports (-i origin <AS>) I do have extensive caching in place, all responses are beeing cached (or rather, the parse result), so no query is ever sent twice. nontheless, a lot of queries remain. right now, I have whois.ripe.net hardwired, of course this is going to change before the tool is released. I am using "-r -a -T <objtype> <object>" for aut-num and as-set, and "-r -a -T <objtype> -i origin <as>" for route objects. Questions: can I make life easier for the whois servers by using another set of query options? what is a good default whois server? whois.ripe.net? whois.radb.net? of course, I run into the penalty delays the whois server imposes because of the amount of queries I send. How do I deal with that? do nothing, just accept the delay (that's how it is now)? is it possible (and feasable!) to mirror the entire IRR? is this documented somewhere? I'd happily point to that documentation and recommend running a local mirror in the manpage if that is feasable. the forced delays also make development pretty painful ;( Thanks & Greetz Henning Brauer -- Henning Brauer, hb(a)bsws.de, henning(a)openbsd.org BS Web Services, http://bsws.de Full-Service ISP - Secure Hosting, Mail and DNS Services Dedicated Servers, Rootservers, Application Hosting - Hamburg & Amsterdam

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Deprecation of CRYPT-PW authentication method from the RIPE Database
by Agoston Horvath 21 Feb '07

21 Feb '07

[Apologies for duplicate mails] Dear Colleagues, The CRYPT-PW deprecation project ends today, Wednesday, 21 February 2007. From today, the following changes will apply: * CRYPT-PW passwords will be disabled in the syntax * CRYPT-PW passwords will be disabled in authorisation * CRYPT-PW passwords will be removed from existing maintainer objects If a maintainer object contained CRYPT-PW passwords only, the passwords were replaced with a randomly generated MD5-PW password. If a maintainer object used an authentication method that was not CRYPT-PW, the CRYPT-PW auth: lines have been removed. To retrieve the removed CRYPT-PW passwords, please visit: https://www.ripe.net/cgi-bin/crypt2md5.cgi The RIPE NCC has recently upgraded its mail servers to support TLS/SSL. If you are updating the RIPE Database by email, please use an SMTP server that supports TLS/SSL. This will protect your data where possible. The use of an SMTP server that supports TLS/SSL is particularly important if you use cleartext password (MD5-PW) for authentication instead of PGP or X509. More information is available at: http://ripe.net/news/tls.html Notification e-mails will be sent today to over 5100 e-mail addresses. A total of 2337 objects had CRYPT-PW authentication only. Another 179 objects had other authentication methods in addition to CRYPT-PW. More information about the project is available at: http://www.ripe.net/db/support/security/crypt-pw_deprecation/ If you have any questions, contact: ripe-dbm(a)ripe.net. Regards, Agoston Horvath Database Group RIPE NCC

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