At last here are the draft minutes for the DB-WG meeting during RIPE-28 in Amsterdam. Thanks to Mike Norris for taking notes and for providing me with the file shortly after the meeting. The delay is exclusively my fault, 'cause I wanted to fix a broken name and a few other things - but didn't get aroud doing it in time. Eso es la vida... Apologies for the delay, and comments, corrections, etc. welcome as ususal. Wilfried. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ D R A F T D R A F T D R A F T Database Working Group Minutes of Meeting, 24th September 1997 at RIPE 28 in Amsterdam The meeting began at 16:00. Wilfried Woeber chaired. 1. Admin Stuff Mike Norris acted as scribe. An agenda of business, as circulated, was agreed. The draft minutes of the DB WG meeting at RIPE 27 had been circulated recently. Comments and corrections were welcome on the mailing list. 2. DB AUP Enforcement Carol Orange reported steps to prevent misues of the RIPE database. Responses to database queries were now prefixed with a copyright notice, with a URL for full details. Those who wished to mirror the database for local use, or to copy it for any other purpose, had to enter into a contract with RIPE NCC; this stipulated, inter alia, that the copyright notice must always be displayed in responses. The NCC was alert to abuse of the database by massive querying. 3. DB SW Status Report Ambrose Magee reported on the status of the database software. whois client - refinements to the -v flag were almost complete - the copyrigt notice (see #2 above) Ack/notification messages - these could now be suppressed RPSL - to be dealt with in a special BoF the next day DSTF - is now active - details in plenary Cross notification - now implemented - available on TEST database New software - new release soon DB consistency project - work has started - deals only with internal inconsistencies at first - three phase approach - state of DB report - prevention - cleanup of existing objects - report by Hallowe'en Statistics - 500,000+ objects - 150,000 updates in August, a peak month - 2,000,000 queries in August Ambrose reminded people to use the -k (keep session open) when making a larger number of queries in a row. Immediate plans - cross notification - DB consistency - "to do" list in line with RIPE NCC activity plan In discussion, it was reported that the NCC would undertake work on referral (to other databases) on completion of cross notification. Results could be expected by RIPE 29. Dana Hudes complained of someone else using his Graphnet trade name as a net-name in the RIPE database. It was agreed that it was not the function of RIPE to enforce any laws, nor to interfere with data entered by users in the database. 4. Registry Data Exchange (RIDE) David Kessens gave a presentation. He said that RIDE would define a standard format for Internet registries, and would define and use a protocol for exchanging and retrieving objects in such registries. A draft charter for the work was ready and there was a mailing list (subscription requests to ride-request@isi.edu). Status was summarised at http://www.isi.edu/~david/ride/ In discussion, David said that RIDE involved RIPE, Internic and ARIN people. An overriding goal was to make the standard as simple as possible. 5. Merit/RSng Jake Khuon reported on work being done by Merit on privacy of attributes. For example, in the inet-rtr object, rs-in: and rs-out: would be public, but contact details would be private. A new PRIV attribute applied to all objects and used the existing security model. In discussion, it was agreed that real-time editing using RA tools would be nice, but needed more authentication. 6. RAWhoisd Compatibility David Kessens reported RAWhoisd extensions. The RAToolSet didn't use all the features of RAWhoisd. He listed some of the new server features that the ToolSet needed, and also some of the outstanding requirements of the server. Performance enhancements would require a lot of effort. Wilfried would circulate Cengiz Alaettinoglu's summary to the mailing list and would invite comments. 7. Input from other WGs The Local IR WG was considering new mechanisms of allocation and reverse delegation. Due care would be exercised with any changes, particularly concerning entries in the database. The Routing WG reported that the aut-num object would have a mnt-route: attribute which would specify one or more maintainers of route objects of the same origin. The attribute would not be mandatory, though; if absent, anyone could add a route object with the aut-num as origin. Joachim Schmitz also reported that controls were still needed to effect hierarchical authorisation. 8. Activity Plan Carol Orange spoke of the RIPE NCC activity plan for 1998 insofar as it concerned work on the database. Resources had been budgetted for database security. Also, the growth of the database might lead to a requirement for new software. In these areas, she looked to the WG for support in specifying what was required. Blasco Bonito asked how many orphan person: objects there were in the database. Carol said that there were many such objects and speculated that aging might be used to help maintain the consistency of the database. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Wilfried Woeber : e-mail: Woeber@CC.UniVie.ac.at Computer Center - ACOnet : Vienna University : Tel: +43 1 4277 - 140 33 Universitaetsstrasse 7 : Fax: +43 1 4277 - 9 140 A-1010 Vienna, Austria, Europe : RIPE-DB (&NIC) Handle: WW144 --------------------------------------------------------------------------