Dear Community Members,

In light of the recent discussion about abuse role objects that were created as a result of prop-125, we would like to share background information about this implementation and consult with the community.

APNIC acknowledges this is a known issue caused by a limitation in whois – which requires the phone number and country attributes to be mandatory in role objects. The abuse role objects are auto-generated from IRT objects, where the phone number attribute is optional and the country attribute which does not exist. This resulted in populating the phone number with '+000000000' in the event no phone number was provided in the IRT object and using the country 'ZZ' to indicate the country is unspecified in the IRT object.

The current whois versions in the RIPE NCC and AFRINIC do not include the country attribute and the phone number attribute is treated as optional in role objects - for example, see RIPE NCC's template below:

Attribute Name  Presence   Repeat     Indexed

role:           mandatory  single     lookup key

address:        mandatory  multiple

phone:          optional   multiple

fax-no:         optional   multiple

e-mail:         mandatory  multiple   lookup key

org:            optional   multiple   inverse key

admin-c:        optional   multiple   inverse key

tech-c:         optional   multiple   inverse key

nic-hdl:        mandatory  single     primary/lookup key

remarks:        optional   multiple

notify:         optional   multiple   inverse key

abuse-mailbox:  optional*  multiple   inverse key

mnt-by:         mandatory  multiple   inverse key

created:        generated  single

last-modified:  generated  single

source:         mandatory  single

A potential solution would be to upgrade APNIC's whois code to duplicate these whois rules. Doing so would result in removing the country attribute from APNIC's role objects altogether, in addition to making the phone number attribute optional. This would ensure that information is accurately reflected in the IRT and abuse role objects.

We would like to hear your feedback or concerns about this proposed change. We plan to present more details during APNIC 52.

Regards,

_______________________________________________________

George Odagi

Senior Internet Resource & Policy Analyst, APNIC

e: helpdesk@apnic.net

p: +61 7 3858 3188

f: +61 7 3858 3199

www.apnic.net

_______________________________________________________

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