[SpamCop-List] Re: nomaster again

[Steven Maesslein]

On Wed, 15 Mar 2006 04:04:50 -0800, Mike Easter coughed into spamcop and 
left this in <dv8vt3$vv1$1 at news.spamcop.net>:

> But, under those 5 are other whois:  whois.registro.br in lacnic, and
> also krnic or whois.nic.or.kr and whois.nic.ad.jp in apnic which are
> sometimes useful to access.

There re indeed LIR's under some RIR's, but this is not always the case. 
In fact I think that LACNIC and APNIC are the only 2.

> sub-registries with a whois query available.  The main terms being, LIR
> for local internet registries and NIRs for national internet registries.

???

Never heard of a NIR before.

KRNIC, CNNIC, JPNIC and AUNIC are known as *Local* Internet Registries, 
not National, even though they do happen to service individual 
countries.

Next step up from them is APNIC, the RIR.

> So an ISP might obtain their allocation from an NIR, LIR, or RIR.

Not all networks are run by ISP's. Some are run by corporations such as 
IBM or GE, or government agencies like the US DoD.

> The SC strategy for finding the correct RIR is based on the notion that
> if you go to arin with an IP, and it is under another RIR, that arin
> will make the proper referral -- but that system is flawed.  Currently
> arin doesn't always refer properly to afrinic, which used to be under
> ripe.

RIPE *and* ARIN.

Currently, the parts of AfriNIC that were previously managed by ARIN are 
correctly changed in ARIN whois to include a referral to AfriNIC. Parts 
that used to be run by RIPE are not.

> IMO, all of the 5 RIRs should function equally well to refer to the 
> others.  In one sense arin is just another RIR, it shouldn't have to 
> be the main portal to which all queries go first.

Agreed. It places an unnecessary burden on ARIN's whois servers.

> Theoretically one wouldn't have to look at some sub-RIR like .kr or .jp
> or .br to find something, but sometimes the sub-registries are useful.

s/sub-RIR/LIR/

> Perhaps the algorithm should be written to query the correct RIR first

That would be a major improvement.

-- 
Steve

Let's call it an accidental feature.
            -- Larry Wall