My idea was just because I think that it is already more important to which registry/provider a network belongs than to which country, unless you want to introduce Internet customs based on country borders ;-)

I prefer to *not* mix things like *allocations* held by *local IRs* (this is administrative stuff) with things like networks having a particular range of addresses *assigned* and *used* in a limited number of countries and being connected to the Internet by some *ISP(s)*. Btw Christian, you probably know my position wrt borders, customs and taxes :-)

Anyhow, of course it should be kept if there is any use for it ! But I don't think that introducing an additional provider *attribute* within the inetnum object will need the design-work for a provider *object* to be finished. The only thing that should be finished is the decision about the provider IDs which will be used as a DB key.

Are you really talking "provider" (ISP) or are you talking "registry"? In many cases these happen to be the same (organisation) but this is not required. I think that we don't need the LIR info in objects describing *assigned* addresses because the IR that performed the assignment can be identified by looking at the less specific object(s).

Ok, let's finish this sidestep and find a solution for the country attribute.

I agree. The provider (or TLD admin) concept might become interesting again when we start to talk about hierarchical authorization for object creation, like route objects and domain objects :-) Wilfried.