Dear Janos!
Theoretically the NIC handle is supposed to uniquely identify the person.
More precisely: ... a uniquely assigned Handle is supposed to...
The problem I noticed is that somebody (inadvertently) registered a person with an Internic-type NIC handle (i.e. without the "-RIPE" suffix) in the RIPE database.
This is a perfectly legal situation, as long as the person being described has a unique handle assigned already, probably from the InterNIC. Obtaining a unique handle from the RIPE-NCC (of the form xyz999-RIPE) and then registering the person object *without* the "-RIPE" suffix string is clearly an error. The overall scheme is that the InterNIC has in the past assigned, and continues to do so, handles of the form xyz999. Every other source of unique handles assignes strings of the form xyz999-suffix, the suffix being unique in itself. The string "-RIPE" is used for the RIPE Handles. Registries in the Asia/Pacific region are reported to use suffix strings derived from the ISO3166 country codes.
The result is an inconsistency between the two databases (RIPE and Internic). One gets different answers, depending on whom one asks the question.
Not necessarily so! The IneterNIC is expected to accept handles assigned by other regsitries interchangably when importing data (objects) from other sources. Btw, has this been tried by anyone recently? Please feel free to ask more questions if this is still in the dark :-) Wilfried. PS: If you could point out the affected objects we could possibly find out what went wrong or if there is really a flaw in the logistics... -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Wilfried Woeber : e-mail: Woeber@CC.UniVie.ac.at Computer Center - ACOnet : Vienna University : Tel: +43 1 4065822 355 Universitaetsstrasse 7 : Fax: +43 1 4065822 170 A-1010 Vienna, Austria, Europe : NIC: WW144 --------------------------------------------------------------------------