[ I can't cc to sg@ripe.net, unless someone approves it in mailman ] On Fri, Mar 30, 2007 at 02:10:24PM -0700, Lorenzo Colitti wrote:
as a user of libbgpdump, I'm curious: does this change break existing users of the MRT format, even if they don't care about 32-bit ASNs?
Yes for RIB dumps. For update dumps, you just won't see any updates from a 4-byte AS peer. For RIB dumps, the entire format changed, so you won't see anything with older versions.
sure you don't want people who download the RIS raw data and try to parse it with route_btoa or old versions of libbgpdump to stop being able to use the raw data files, right?
I prefer not to, but IMHO, it was the best option here. The other option could be to dump only route entries with a 4-byte AS in the new format. But that would lead to a very very nasty quagga patch and people might be missing routes without knowing.
If this stuff did break, were the users warned with an appropriate email to the ris-users mailing list? I didn't see one, but admittedly I only briefly scanned the archives...
Yes. One on Jan 11, one on Mar 15 with details of the new format, one on Mar 22 (also sent to routing-wg) to say that changes will be applied on Mar 27. cheers, -- Erik Romijn RIPE NCC jr. software engineer http://www.ripe.net/ Information Services dept.