On 27/11/2013 17:51, Rob Evans wrote:
- The change is backwards compatible with older RPSL parsers. - The new attributes are completely optional. - This change adds advanced functionality that will especially benefit route server operators and participants.
Can I encourage those that have an opinion about this to voice it? The NCC would like some confirmation from the community that there is some demand to implement this (and no objection to doing it).
I don't object to this change, and possibly a good purpose will be served by having it although I don't plan to use it. By way of historical context, this syntax was previously implemented about 15 years ago using the rs-in: and rs-out: statements for the routing arbiter project. These parameters were lost in the mists of time, but you can still find traces of them here and there, e.g.
http://www.nanog.org/mailinglist/mailarchives/old_archive/1999-10/msg00429.h...
My main concern about the changes is that they unearth a more fundamental problem with rpsl, namely that it is not possible to extend the language without creating a new incompatible statement fork with duplicated syntax. Probably this can be handled relatively efficiently by the back-end code but from the point of view of language design, it's ugly. Nick