On 12 Sep 2002, James Tyson wrote:
Dean Pemberton and I have been talking with Simon about trying to get WIX and APE whois servers running so that people could start registering routes and AS policy for RPSL use in NZ.
Just out of interest, what's the benefit in running yet another RPSL database?
Infact, it might be a very good idea to host an RPSL database in New Zealand, and ask the nice folks at Merit to mirror it.
Let me nail my colours to the mast. My preference is not to run a local database. APNIC has recently made the transition to RIPE V3 code and have highly available and fast servers in Brisbane. This data is mirrored at RIPE. The servers in Brisbane are around 90ms away. They will have full support for the relevant RPSL objects in the next few months - the database already supports these - hostmaster training is currently in progress. Dean and I have only discussed running a local service because we were concerned that local resistance to using a remote service might slow progress. IFF we run a database it would be with the goal of using it as a transition step.
If only for such reasons as having nice fast access to the DB, and having it run by someone you trust.
See above - I think this access is fast enough and I think APNIC can be trusted. They're also roughly in the same time zone and people are in general customers who have paid for this service.
Moebius Systems is more than happy to run said irrd server in NZ on one of our servers if that's what needs to happen to organise the routing in NZ a little more.
I'd recommend using the RIPE code as the authentication and database consistency mechanisms and search capabilites are much better.
WRT private AS', I am not sure if this is a good idea, however I am also not sure that asking enterprises to get their own globally unique AS number is a good (or responsible) thing to do either. Perhaps we can form a "working group" (not the InternetNZ sense, the NZNOG sense, where we all go out for curry and beer) to discuss a standard for this sort of thing within NZ. I know this sounds yuck, but what about carefully controlled IGP's or maybe funky use of confederations?
And here's the only time I'd advocate running a private database. If people want to allocate private ASes for use on a "private network" like Citylink (remember the 202.7.0.0/23 is not routed globally). In that case it wouldn't be appropriate to have Merit/APNIC etc mirror this although duplicate local servers could be run using NRTM.
There is also one more way of acquiring /24 address space that hasn't been mentioned. We acquired the remnants of a company with one :)
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