Dear Hank,
I see that the file is still sorted by allocated/assigned and then by IP. Why was this changed and why can't it be changed back to the way it was?
The file format specification leaves the sort order undefined. This is the specification that is used by all RIRs who implement the extended delegated files. The actual order of the entries in the file is therefore an artifact of the back-end and the intermediate processing. The format specification for the "old" files did not define a sorting order either.
3. File format [...] After the header lines, records are not sorted.
(ftp://ftp.ripe.net/pub/stats/ripencc/RIR-Statistics-Exchange-Format.txt) As a side note: Over the years we have received several comments about the ordering of the files, with different people expressing different preferences. If the community clearly prefers a certain sorting order over another, we could look into modifying the software to support this. Best regards, Alex Le Heux Policy Implementation & Co-ordination RIPE NCC