Re: [apnic-talk] Errors in the APNIC WHOIS data base
Apologies for my tardy treply.
In message <097E9117-2255-4FAD-8403-179DF8763E93@apnic.net>,
Vivek Nigam <vivek@apnic.net> wrote:
>Delegations made by APNIC are protected by the APNIC maintainer APNIC-HM,
>while delegations made by NIRs are protected by NIR maintainers like
>MAINT-VN-VNNIC, MAINT-JPNIC etc.
>The netnames you mentioned are associated with delegations made by the
>NIRs.
OK, but could -somebody- please nudge, cajole, browbeat, or do whatever
it takes to get the NIRs to stop handing out allocations without also
creating organisation records for the parties to whom they are giving
the number resources?
It would also be maximally helpful if the NIRs would go back now and
create proper organisation: records, as may be needed, for any of what
I have come to call the "top level" direct allocation holders.
Honestly, trying to parse WHOIS records obtained from all five of the
Rregional Internet Registries in order to do Useful Things[tm] is already
hard enough without having to deal with a whole additional layer of
obfsucation & complexity that is introduced by these various APNIC
region NIRs and their inability or unwllingness to conform to perfectly
reasonable and already commonly used standards regarding WHOIS data
base entries.
I understand that history is working against progress here, but this
problem... of what I and my code see as the numerous "malformed" APNIC
WHOIS data base entries... all or mostly traces back to one or another
of these NIRs. And this is a unique problem that *only* arises with
respect to APNIC. In general, and with very fee exceptions, none of
the other global RIRs make it even nearly so difficult to just simply
find out the name and country of an entity that is the registrant of
a number resource.
Given that unfortunate fact, I hope that I will be forgiven for expressing
my feelings about this quite explicitly... History and nationalities be
damned! This is ONE global Internet, and the need to be able to easily
identify the name and country of any given registrant of any given number
resource, no matter where it is on the planet, should not be in any sense
controversial, nor should this goal be twarted by any excessive deference
to a handful of recalcitrant and unhelpful national authorities. (As we
say here, they should all "get with the program".)
>Apart from working with the NIRs...
Working with the NIRs is Good. My hope is simply that part of this "work"
will be to simply tell them that there need to be some standards with
respect to the representation of things within the APNIC data base,
and that they need to either lead, follow, or get out of the way.
I look forward to the day when my software tools will no longer need to
be corrupted by an ever growing number of hacks and work-arounds, all
put in place just to compensate for the frequent failure to adhere to
even minimal reasonable standards within the APNIC WHOIS data base.
I'm sorry if that sounds harsh, but these are the facts. Every other
regional WHOIS data base makes it trivially easy to find the identity
of a resource holder. APNIC, not so much.
Regards,
rfg