[64370] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Whois software run by Lacnic and BR?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (leo vegoda)
Tue Oct 21 11:12:45 2003
Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2003 10:10:46 -0500
To: nanog@merit.edu
From: leo vegoda <leo@ripe.net>
In-Reply-To: <3F9538A2.2070209@mrp.net>
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
Mark Prior <mrp@mrp.net> wrote:
[...]
>>> The whois server at the .BR registry (also the NIR for Brazil) doesn't
>>> provide country information because it's implicit as it only provide
>>> information for Brazil.
>> Implicit is fine for humans but for automated scripts, couldn't it
>>be made to have country=BR for all your inetnum entries?
>
>When I was running a whois server we discovered that not all local
>people appeared to want to use a local address. Some of them had head
>offices used for billing, and the like, that was in a different country
>so having the country code was useful even for humans.
So how should whois users understand country information in the
database?
Should they interpret it as "my network is located in this country"?
Alternatively, should they interpret it as "our corporate offices are in
this country"? Increasingly, there is a discontinuity between the two as
international corporations run networks in many countries from an HQ in
just one.
If people updating the information in whois have different ideas about
its meaning then users of whois its value might be lower than expected.
Regards,
--
leo vegoda
RIPE NCC
Registration Services Manager
