Hi, Following a presentation of an IP Management Tool by Guy Vegoda at the last RIPE Meeting Tools BOF, interest was expressed in the development of an Open Source version of such a tool and I agreed to use the lirwg list to try and draw up Requirements for this. Hopefully this can be refined into something that we can then begin writing Specifications for. Please remember that these are *Requirements* - i.e. what the users want the tool to do. Please confine remarks to this area and avoid mixing in the *Specifications* - i.e. how those requirements will be met - which we will come to, in good time. It should also be emphasised that we would at this stage like to concentrate on _minimum_ requirements for a simple tool, such that it would be useful to a large number of LIRs. I think we can use these Minimum Requirements to produce something that may or may not include more advanced features as well, knowing that we would at least have covered the basic needs. Comments on this process and the document are most welcome, and we would also like a good name. Thanks to Guy Vegoda, Leo Vegoda and Nigel Titley for their help in drawing up this document, and especially to Guy for presenting his tool. Cheers, Maldwyn Morris Software Manager RIPE NCC -- Minimum Requirements for an IP Management Tool ---------------------------------------------- 0. Introduction Guy Vegoda presented an IP Management Tool at the Tools BOF at RIPE 38 [1]. This document is an attempt to specify the minimum requirements for a similar tool, with the aim of producing an Open Source version for anyone who wants to use it. Below, I address 1. General Points about the project, 2. The Requirements themselves, 3. External Constraint that must be considered, and 4. A list of References. 1. General Points Name: Let's use IPMT ( IP Management Tool ) as a placeholder for now. Users: We will target as users 'The Hostmaster staff of Local Internet Registries which are Customers of the RIPE NCC and who need to manage their IP Allocations and Assignments and the requests for same that they send to the RIPE NCC' [phew]. We will call one of these people a 'LIRHostmaster' and their organisation an 'LIR'. It may also be useful to other people in other organisations to do other things, but that will not influence the requirements. Open Source: We will release this software under the LGPL licence [2]. We use this instead of GPL [3] because this means we will remain able to using non-GPL'ed libraries, should that prove necessary. The RIPE NCC is happy to support this project, but of course its Open Source nature means anyone else can use the code to begin their own Open Source project. We are also happy about that. IPV6: We would be foolish not to consider the possibility of using this tool for managing IPV6 addresses and writing it such that this is possible, but we think it will be useful even if it does not and do not consider IPV6 support a requirement. 2. Requirements General functionality: IPMT should provide the LIRHostmasters with list, create, update, and delete access to information regarding their LIR's IPV4 allocations. These actions must be undoable where necessary. Basic validity checks will be performed on all input. IPMT should provide the LIRHostmasters with list, create, update, and delete access to information regarding their LIR's IPV4 assignments. These actions must be undoable where necessary. Basic validity checks will be performed on all input. IPMT should allow the LIRHostmasters to receive requests for IPV4 assignments from the customers of their LIR and allow them to process them. IPMT should allow LIRHostmasters to send well-formatted email requests for new IPv4 assignments to the RIPE NCC and allow the LIRHostmasters to receive and process responses from the RIPE NCC. IPMT should allow LIRHostmasters to send well-formatted email requests for new IPv4 allocations to the RIPE NCC and allow the LIRHostmasters to receive and process responses from the RIPE NCC. User Interface: LIRHostmasters should be able to conveniently access IPMT functions from a wide range of Desktop Operating Systems, possibly including non-modern, non-Unix-like ones. A GUI interface is the minimal acceptable convenience level. A less-convenient interface to IPMT for more complex functions and administration is acceptable. 3. External constraints The RIPE NCC only accepts requests for new IPv4 Assignments and Allocations via email to hostmaster@ripe.net and replies only via email [4]. IPV4 Assignment requests must be in RIPE 141 format [5]. Requests for new IPV4 Allocations have no special format. LIRHostmasters handle customer requests for Assignments via telephone, email and web pages. IPMT must have access to the RIPE DB [6] or a local mirror thereof. 4. References [1] http://www/ripe/meetings/archive/ripe-38/index.html [2] http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/lesser.html [3] http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html [4] http://www.ripe.net/ripencc/mem-services/registration/status.html [5] http://www.ripe.net/ripe/docs/ripe-141.html [6] http://www.ripe.net/ripencc/pub-services/db/