HI All I make no apologies for the length of this email, but I would ask anyone concerned with abuse handling, RIPE Database data management and RIPE Database maintenance to read it. I am not trying to be a perfectionist or technical purist, but the changes being forced through now do matter. cheers denis When "abuse-c:" was first proposed, Tobias (co-chair of Anti Abuse WG) and I spent a lot of time discussing how to achieve the intended goal. We came up with the current implementation, which after community discussion was approved. But you never think of everything in the first instance. I believe there is one piece missing that allows the whole system to be broken (see later). I also believe the changes being made (without proper discussion) by the RIPE NCC's 'improvements' to Webupdates will break the abuse-c system over time. As a separate issue, but related to this, I think the RIPE NCC should give advance notice to the community of changes to interfaces like Webupdates and allow some discussion on significant changes like ORGANISATION object creation and authorisation and not just 'slip them in', then try to justify them when someone notices. These are major changes to the way the RIPE Database works. They are not just changing the look and feel of Webupdates as an interface tool. So lets start with some history. The goal of "abuse-c:" When the data model was designed there was no thought given to abuse contacts. The internet was much smaller and more personal. The data model was built on the principle of human readability and not programatic parsing. So when the need for abuse reporting was first considered necessary it was good enough to add things like: remarks: In case of abuse contact me@here.com You could put this anywhere and someone would find it. Then it got a bit more formal and we introduced the "abuse-mailbox:" attribute. But this was allowed in five or six object types. None of these were the resource objects. So the information was scattered all over the database. This was still almost impossible to find programatically. The goal of "abuse-c:" was: -to have one way of documenting abuse contact details -parsable programatically -very simple for majority of resources -flexible for any other resource situation The "abuse-c:" design Tobias and I considered many options to achieve these goals. What we focussed in on was that most small to medium LIRs may have many resources but only one person/role handling abuse complaints. All these resource objects in the database referenced their one ORGANISATION object. So by adding the "abuse-c:" attribute to the one ORGANISATION object, referencing a ROLE object containing the contact details, we handled a large number of simple cases in a very simple way. All the resources referencing this one ORGANISATION object and all the more specific resources would inherit this contact information from this one location. Easy to set up, easy to maintain. But there are other situations. For example sub allocations. We also considered that accountability is an important element of this public registry database. There is a notion that when a resource is allocated or assigned by the RIPE NCC to an organisation, then that organisation is ultimately responsible for anything that happens regarding that resource. This is why ORGANISATION objects are mandatory for any organisation that wants to hold internet resources. So we considered that if part of the responsibility has been delegated to another organisation with a sub allocation, it is not unreasonable that another ORGANISATION object should be created to reflect this delegated responsibility. If this second organisation handles the abuse reporting for this sub allocation, then another "abuse-c:" attribute can be added to their ORGANISATION object to reflect this. If the LIR who is responsible for this allocation, including the sub allocation, wants to handle all abuse reports for the whole of their allocation then no "abuse-c:" should be added to the second ORGANISATION object. The sub allocation will then continue to inherit the abuse contact details of the LIR who holds the whole resource. Inheritance vs Scattering The data model for the RIPE Database was not designed with inheritance in mind. In many situations duplicated, redundant data is scattered all over the database. There are over 3 million INETNUM objects in the database. They all contain one or more "admin-c:" and "tech-c:" attributes. In reality all these references are to a few tens of thousands of individual roles. These contacts could be inherited from the ORGANISATION objects in the way "abuse-c:" has been set up. The "abuse-c:" was designed to be inherited and not to be duplicated where it is not needed. The changes made recently to Webupdates by the RIPE NCC (without any discussion) breaks the inheritance of "abuse-c:". It forces the scattering of more redundant data throughout the database. If you create an ORGANISATION object with Webupdates it forces the addition of an "abuse-c:" attribute whether it is needed or not. They argue that you can refer to an existing ROLE object making it the same abuse contact. Even if this was set up correctly it is redundant data. In reality people setting this up quickly will just take the easy option of giving any email address (mickey@mouse.com). They may not realise the impact of this. But this simple mistake overrides the LIRs genuine abuse contact details from any point in a network where this new ORGANISATION object is referenced. Understanding your network and the RIPE Database What it comes down to is that you should understand how your network is structured. You should at least know who needs to be contacted, for what reason, from which point in your network. Unfortunately with the current data model you also need to have at least a basic understanding of how the data is structured within the RIPE Database. And to be honest if you don't understand the basic structure of the RIPE Database you should not be managing data in it, maintaining it or documenting it. With knowledge of your network and the database you can decide where you need to put "abuse-c:" attributes. DO NOT add extra, redundant "abuse-c:" attributes. What can possibly go wrong? In defence of their unannounced changes to Webupdates, the RIPE NCC has argued that adding additional "abuse-c:" attributes is harmless and will NOT lead to bad data in the database. Forcing users to add additional, redundant data that breaks the principle of inheritance is in itself technically wrong. But without being a technical purist what else can go wrong? Once these additional references have been added, the seeds have been sown for future mistakes. It all depends now on who maintains what and who is notified of what changes. The referenced ROLE object can be changed or the "abuse-mailbox:" value in the ROLE object can be changed. This could be accidental or with good intent, but just got it wrong or even maliciously. Without the proper checks this can easily go unnoticed. Over time some/many of these redundant references may/will get out of sync with what they should refer to. In a few years time someone will argue that all this contact data is messed up, abuse-c did not work and we will invent a new system... The missing bit The "abuse-c:" attribute does work and will work well if used properly. But there is one bit missing from the original design....proper notifications. We need another attribute adding to the ORGANISATION object abuse-notif: [required] [multiple] [] This will allow the resource holder to keep an audit trail of any changes made to the abuse contact details for any parts of their resources. The 'required' (as defined in the database documentation) means it is syntactically optional, but business rules enforce it's presence in some situations. This should be added to any ORGANISATION object referenced by a resource object. Any addition, change or deletion of any part of the abuse contact details ("abuse-c: attribute, referenced ROLE object, "abuse-mailbox:" attribute) at any part of a network will be notified to the resource holder's email address specified in this attribute. Only the "abuse-notif:" referenced via the top level of a resource object will be notified. Any redundant references in more specific objects will be ignored (and should be removed, warned or disallowed). This means the resource holder will always be notified if anything is changed at any point in the resources/networks they are responsible for. I also think it would be useful if RIPEstat could give a visual representation of where abuse contacts are located within a network. This would allow a resource holder to review who is managing abuse for any part of their networks.