[At-Large] Depository (was Re: Privacy and domain abuse vs the IP constituency)

[Karl Auerbach]

On 05/09/2011 06:30 AM, John R. Levine wrote:

>> However, this does suggest to me that if muddy records is the harm that
>> is feared then if Depository makes a commitment to a reverse IP address
>> lookup system that is at least as good as those offered by any of the
>> RIRs then the argument of public-harm dissipates.
>
> As should be even more blindingly obvious, if Depository competes with the
> RIRs, we'll end up with a situation where some records are at Depository,
> some are at RIRs, and there's no way to tell which is more accurate or
> more current.  It's bad enough now trying to track old allocations that
> have been moved from ARIN to other RIRs, and there the RIRs are trying to
> stay in sync.  What incentive would the RIRs have to track records at
> Depository?  Who's supposed to pay for their costs of doing so?
>
> There's a reason each county only has one deed registry, you know.

Well, as an analogy the "one deed" one falls flat - most land in the US 
is subject to easements, building code exemptions, and deeds of trust or 
mortgages - it is somewhat of an art to dig through the records at a 
county clerks office to figure out the full bag of rights towards a 
chunk of real property.

But getting back to records - One of the reasons that RIRs have bad 
records is that them have made it a pain in el butto to keep the records 
up to date.

I had to go to hell and back to update my address block records at ARIN. 
  They simply refused to deal with an individual, they could not belief 
that a natural person had IP address blocks.  It took what amounted to 
RIR devine intervention to get 'em to update the records.  Had I not 
been on the ICANN Board of Directors at the time I am not sure whether I 
would have been accorded such a beneficent intervention.

As for the larger scope of RIR recordkeeping - if the problem is such as 
you say then the fact that the RIRs have created a mess ought not to be 
assessed as a negative against a newcomer.

What if that newcomer were to say - hey, we will provide a service to 
hold all IP block records - we will accept input from RIRs or any IP 
address space broker and we will charge only the costs, no profit.

To some extent the records are academic anyway - because the RIRs do not 
guarantee that an address block is routable or usable.

The really useful information about IP address blocks is whether it can 
receive packets from the rest of the internet.

That information is held by those who do routing, not by the RIRs.

And many address blocks are contaminated by prior users (typically 
spammers) - old filters remain, still active, but forgotten.

And some address blocks are contaminated because they once contained 
servers that, even though those servers are long gone, are still 
bombarded by client requests.  (I once had a chunk of space that got 300 
SIP Invites a second aimed a long gone SIP PBX.)

Anyone buying IP address space would want that kind of information, and 
even the existing RIRs can't provide it.

	--karl--