Dear Colleagues, [Apologies for multiple messages] On and from Monday, 15th October, 2001, the RIPE Database will no longer accept updates in RIPE-181 format. Mail robot at <auto-181@ripe.net> will be shutdown. The update path for the TEST database will also be changed. We plan to discontinue <test-181@ripe.net> service on 11th October, 2001. If you are still sending updates in RIPE-181 format, we advise you to switch to RPSL before 15th October. Please send your objects in RPSL format to <auto-dbm@ripe.net>. You may use ripe2rpsl utility to convert your RIPE-181 objects to RPSL format before sending them to the RIPE Database. The utility can be found at ftp://ftp.ripe.net/tools/ripe2rpsl-3.0.2.tar.gz. As part of this final step we will also make some cleanup of the ftp.ripe.net site. - The top directory for the RIPE Database software and flat object files is ftp://ftp.ripe.net/ripe/dbase. - "Short" versions of flat object files [*] will not be supported. [*]Version of a flat object file where attribute names are abbreviated to 2 letter code starting with '*'. The name of the object file also contains the object type in abbreviated form. For example ripe.db.in is the "short" version of the flat file for inetnum objects, while ripe.db.inetnum is the "long " version that is RPSL compliant. For more information please visit http://www.ripe.net/rpsl If you have any questions, please contact <ripe-dbm@ripe.net>. Regards, Andrei Robachevsky DB Group Manager RIPE NCC