June 2021 - db-wg - mailman.ripe.net

New NWI for geofeed?
by denis walker 14 Apr '22

14 Apr '22

Colleagues [Apologies for the length of this email...] The chairs would like to suggest creating a new NWI for the "geofeed:" attribute and suggest the following draft Problem statement and Solution definition. If there is agreement on this the RIPE NCC will do an impact assessment including legal review and summary of what the other RIRs are doing. There has already been quite a discussion in the WG on this issue with a lot of support. So hopefully we can reach a consensus quickly, at least on setting up the NWI and starting the impact assessment. Having read the latest draft IETF docs, there are some outstanding questions. Comments and changes are welcome... cheers denis co-chair DB-WG Problem statement Associating an approximate physical location with an IP address has proven to be a challenge to solve within the current constraints of the RIPE Database. Over the years the community has chosen to consider addresses in the RIPE Database to relate to entities in the assignment process itself, not the subsequent actual use of IP addresses after assignment. The working group is asked to consider whether the RIPE Database can be used as a springboard for parties wishing to correlate geographical information with IP addresses by allowing structured references in the RIPE Database towards information outside the RIPE Database which potentially helps answer Geo IP Location queries The IETF is currently discussing an update to RPSL to add a new attribute "geofeed: url". The url will reference a csv file containing location data. Some users have already started to make use of this feature via the "remarks: geofeed: url". It is never a good idea to try to overload structured data into the free format "remarks:" attribute. This has been done in the past, for example with abuse contact details before we introduced the "abuse-c:" attribute. There is no way to regulate what database users put into "remarks:" attributes. So even if the new "geofeed:" attribute is not agreed, the url data will still be included in the RIPE Database. Currently there are 24,408 INETNUM and 516,354 INET6NUM objects containing a "remarks: geofeed: url" attribute in the database. These have 7,731 distinct values in the INETNUMs and 1,045 distinct values in the INET6NUMs. Solution definition Implement a new "geofeed:" attribute according to the IETF's definition. Although the IETF has not yet concluded discussions on this attribute we can still implement it in the RIPE Database RPSL data definition. The RIPE Database already has many local differences to the RPSL standard. As expressed in the Problem statement, users are already using the geofeed data by overloading the "remarks:" attribute. That is a dirty hack which should be avoided. An invalid formated url will be a syntax error. The RIPE NCC will perform a one time conversion of the existing data to convert "remarks: geofeed: url" to "geofeed: url". If an update then contains a "remarks: geofeed: url" attribute, the update will be successful and the response should include an appropriate Warning message. At some point in the (near) future, this could be changed to an update failure as a syntax error. An update containing a "geofeed:" and a "remarks: geofeed:" attribute or more than one "remarks: geofeed:" will be a syntax error. The resource holder should be able to create, modify, delete the "geofeed:" attribute in allocation objects. Questions: -Should the database software do any checks on the existence/reachability of the url as part of the update with an error if the check fails? -Should the RIPE NCC do any periodic repeat checks on the continued existence/reachability of the url? -Should the RIPE NCC do any periodic checks on the content structure of the csv file referenced by the url? -Should the Solution definition define how this will be adopted into RDAP or should we simply ask the RIPE NCC to define this in their impact assessment? -The RIPE Database contains hierarchical address space objects. Should it be acceptable for "geofeed:" attributes to exist at multiple levels within a specific hierarchy? -Suppose a geofeed csv file referenced by a /16 INETNUM object contains location data for the whole /16. Then a more specific /24 INETNUM object references another geofeed csv file that contains conflicting location data for this /24. Should this be a concern for the RIPE Database? -Should geofeed data be inherited? If you query for a /24 that does not contain a "geofeed:" attribute, but a less specific /16 does contain a "geofeed:" attribute, should this data be returned? In other words could it be used in a similar way to "abuse-c:"? -Thinking ahead to how people will actually deploy this data and what short cuts they could make. It is said that when reading a geofeed csv file, consumers of the data should ignore all data within that file not directly concerning the address space queried in the RIPE Database. Could you therefore create a single csv file with location data for all your address space and reference the same file in all your RIPE Database address objects? The address space owner could rely on the data consumer to pick out the correct piece of data for the relevant address space. The manager of the csv file then only has to work with one file. If this is possible and does happen (which the IETF doc 'Finding geofeeds' seems to suggest is possible for unsigned geofeed data), would it therefore make sense to apply "geofeed:" hierarchically as with "abuse-c:"? Allow a single, default "geofeed:" attribute in the ORGANISATION object to be applied to all that organisations address space, with the option of specific localised "geofeed:" attributes in address space objects. That could be a neater solution, and easier to setup, than applying thousands of references to the same geofeed file at a more specific level in the database. -Relating to the above 3 questions, should geofeed data only be considered applicable if returned by a specific geofeed locater application which takes into account the hierarchical nature of address space in the database? Otherwise do the standard database query mechanisms have to take into account this hierarchy and locate the most specific "geofeed:" attribute from the less specific objects? -Should/could the RIPE Database return the csv file as part of the query? If so should the file be cached (for how long?) to avoid too many downloads? -Should we only allow HTTPS urls? (Which the IETF doc 'Finding geofeeds' seems to suggest) -Should the RIPE NCC go ahead and implement this now, with our own set of RIPE rules? Or should we try to coordinate this and agree a set of common rules between all the RIRs before any deployment in the RIPE Database? -For the legal review, there are 2 statements in the IETF doc 'Finding geofeeds' which may be of concern: *[RFC8805] geofeed data may reveal the approximate location of an IP address, which might in turn reveal the approximate location of an individual user. Unfortunately, [RFC8805] provides no privacy guidance on avoiding or ameliorating possible damage due to this exposure of the user. In publishing pointers to geofeed files as described in this document the operator should be aware of this exposure in geofeed data and be cautious. All the privacy considerations of [RFC8805] Section 4 apply to this document. *It is significant that geofeed data may have finer granularity than the inetnum: which refers to them. It is clear that the RIPE NCC cannot prevent this data being referenced by objects in the RIPE Database. It is already being referenced from "remarks:" attributes. Perhaps the RIPE NCC should require (as part of their service agreement) that it's members obtain written consent from their customers to publish this location data, or at least inform the customers in writing that it will be published. Also, although RFC8805 says postcode is deprecated it is still provided for in the csv files. So anyone can still enter location data to this detail. -The IETF doc 'Finding geofeeds' suggests that geofeed information 'will be' available in bulk accessed whois data. In view of the privacy concerns above, is this likely? -The IETF doc 'Finding geofeeds' says "To minimize the load on RIR whois [RFC3912] services, use of the RIR's FTP [RFC0959] services SHOULD be the preferred access." Is the RIPE NCC expected to download all the geofeed files and make them available through their FTP service? -The IETF doc 'Finding geofeeds' states that consumers of the geofeed data MUST NOT access this data in real time via the RPSL servers 'too frequently' or at 'magic times like midnight'. Some users will do whatever they want to do if they are able to do, regardless of any statements to the contrary. Should the RIPE NCC enforce such access rules by some means? References The IETF doc 'Finding geofeeds': https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-opsawg-finding-geofeeds/?includ… geofeed file format: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8805.html

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"status:" attribute values in the RIPE database
by Edward Shryane 30 Aug '21

30 Aug '21

Dear colleagues, In Remco van Mook's presentation to the Address Policy WG at RIPE 82: "What Colour Is My IP(v4) space? PI Addresses and LIRs", he pointed out that resource "status:" attribute values may not always be all UPPERCASE. This is because the RIPE database is case-insensitive and case preserving in general, meaning a "status:" attribute value is the same regardless of the case. However, this may make parsing this value more difficult as the case should be ignored. Should the DB team implement a rule to always force the "status:" attribute value to uppercase, for consistency? Regards Ed Shryane RIPE NCC

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RIPE NONAUTH route(6) objects using unregistered space cleanup - deployment *today*
by Edward Shryane 08 Jul '21

08 Jul '21

Dear colleagues, The implementation of the cleanup of RIPE NONAUTH route(6) objects using unregistered space is now complete, we plan to deploy to production *today*. This means that the cleanup job will run for the first time tonight. * Each night, all RIPE NONAUTH route(6) objects with an unregistered prefix ("available" or "reserved" in delegated stats) are selected. * If a prefix remains unregistered for 1 week, notify the maintainers of any related route(6) objects. * The maintainer can ask to make an exception, not to delete a route(6) object. * Otherwise, after a further 2 weeks, delete the route(6) objects. See the solution definition for more details: https://www.ripe.net/ripe/mail/archives/db-wg/2021-March/006876.html Note for now, the AS origin status is *not* considered. Please discuss further whether this should be included. If you have any feedback, please let us know. Regards Ed Shryane RIPE NCC

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Whois Release 1.101
by Edward Shryane 01 Jul '21

01 Jul '21

Dear Working Group, RIPE Database release 1.101 has been deployed to the Release Candidate environment. We plan to deploy to production on Thursday 1st July. This release includes the following main changes: * Switch RIPE database to UTC timezone (all timestamps will be in UTC and all timestamps specify the 'Z' timezone) * Display an error on NRTM if client is blocked by ACL limit (#812) * Added rewrite rules to embedded Jetty (#801) * RDAP nameserver queries always return Not Implemented (#811) * Updated dependencies *Additionally* some operational changes will also be made to the production environment on 1st July: * Remove support for TLS versions 1.0 and 1.1 on HTTPS connections * The IETF has formally deprecated these TLS versions, now only versions 1.2 and 1.3 are recommended. * Remove insecure TLS cipher algorithms * TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_CAMELLIA_128_CBC_SHA * TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_CAMELLIA_256_CBC_SHA * TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_SEED_CBC_SHA * TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA * TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA * Remove HTTP redirects for whois.ripe.net and www.db.ripe.net * HTTP requests to these hosts will no longer redirect to https://apps.db.ripe.net but will return 400 Bad Request. * Remove HTTP redirects for the legacy Whois REST API * The legacy Whois REST API was retired in 2015, a temporary redirect to https://rest.db.ripe.net will be removed. * HTTP requests to the legacy API at http://apps.db.ripe.net/whois/lookup/ripe will return 400 Bad Request. Please check your Whois client in case you are affected by these changes. The release notes are on the website: https://www.ripe.net/manage-ips-and-asns/db/release-notes/ripe-database-rel… More information on the Release Candidate environment can be found on our website: https://www.ripe.net/manage-ips-and-asns/db/release-notes/rc-release-candid… Please let us know if you find any issues with this release in the RC environment. Regards Ed Shryane RIPE NCC

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Removie ALL bogus route objects from BOTH data bases
by Ronald F. Guilmette 21 Jun '21

21 Jun '21

I guess I'll try this again, since I don't recall seeing either any ascent nor any pushback the last time I tried to raise this point here. Al long as those bogus route objects that refer to bogon IP address space are being removed from the data, why not also remove all of the equally bogus route objects that refer to bogon AS numbers? I hope that I'm not actually the only one who sees the wisdom in cleaning up the whole mess that currently exists in the RIPE data bases. There are, at present, on the order of about 80 or so bogus route objects in the "regular" data base that refer to bogon AS numbers, and there are, give or take, about 1,500 of such bogus route objects currently within the (separate) RIPE-NONAUTH data base. Is anyone passionately in favor of keeping all of this useless and potentially fraudlent or misleading garbage in the data base? If not, then why not clear it all out? I mean seriously, the RIRs data bases are *supposed* to be the definitive guides to who has what and who may use what. And yet RIPE is, in effect, tacitly -appproving- of the use of bogon AS numbers. So I need to ask: Why? Regards, rfg

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Removal of bogon route objects
by Ronald F. Guilmette 15 Jun '21

15 Jun '21

Friends, As previously discussed, the decision was made awhile back to remove from the data base all RIPE-NONAUTH route objects which refer to currently unallocated IP space: https://www.ripe.net/ripe/mail/archives/db-wg/2021-May/006952.html In recent days I stumbled upon one such object that was still present in the data base. Upon seeing that object, I necessarily assumed that it was most likely not a "one off", and that it probably had siblings. In the spirit of trying to help out, and after a fair bit of fooling around on my part, I managed to concoct a rather simple method for finding all such bogon route objects that remain in the data base, and I wrote a small Perl script to do that exact thing. A copy of the script may be obtained here, for anyone who may be interested: https://pastebin.com/raw/LsvZ05tX Notes: *) The script assumes the presence of two external programs and their presence on the user's current $PATH, i.e. the widely used wget progarm, and also John Levine's version of a thing called grepcidr, sources for which may be obtained here: https://github.com/jrlevine/grepcidr3 *) The initial line of the script may have to be adjusted depending on the location, in the filesystem, of your local Perl interpreter. *) The script computes its results based upon the following two input data files, both of which are automagically fetched by the script using wget: https://www.nro.net/wp-content/uploads/delegated-stats/nro-extended-stats ftp://ftp.ripe.net/ripe/dbase/ripe-nonauth.db.gz (It is my understanding that each of these is updated on a daily basis.) *) The script DOES NOT verify that the entirety of any given RIPE-NONAUTH route object in fact refers to bogon space. Rather the script only checks to see whether or not the first IPv4 address of each current RIPE-NONAUTH route object does or does not refer to current bogon space. If it does, then the entire IPv4 CIDR of the route object is printed to stdout. *) Assuming that the script is installed as "ripebogonroutes" and in one's path, it may be invoked simply as: ripebogonroutes > bogon-route-cidrs *) At present there are 55,964 RIPE-NONAUTH objects in the data base. Of these, the first address of 857 of them refers to current bogon space. It is my fervent hope that the corresponding RIPE-NONAUTH route objects will be removed from the data base as soon as reasonably practical. Regards, rfg

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RIPE-NONAUTH route object anomalies
by Ronald F. Guilmette 14 Jun '21

14 Jun '21

It appears that, by and large, the route objects currently present within the ripe-nonauth.db.gz file refer either to bogons (which I've already provided a list of) or else they refer to out-of-region IP address blocks. The latter group seems at least explainable. The former group I am hoping will disappear from the data base soon. Checking now however I find there are a very small number of anomalous route objects within the latest edition of the ripe-nonauth.db.gz file, i.e. ones that refer to in-region IP blocks: 192.124.252.0/22 192.70.0.0/17 192.76.32.0/21 192.108.160.0/20 I'm not sure how these should be made to go away, but I wish they would. They offend my personal sense of fastidiousness, and I don't like unexplainable mysteries. Note that the RIPE-NONAUTH route object 192.76.32.0/21 appears to have some counterpart route objects for sub-blocks of that /21 and these sub-blocks route objects are *not* marked as RIPE-NONAUTH, suggesting that there is no compelling reason for the 192.76.32.0/21 route object to be marked as RIPE-NONAUTH. The same sort of syndrome appears to apply also in the case of the 192.124.252.0/22 RIPE-NONAUTH route object, i.e. in this case also there appear to be valid non-RIPE-NONAUTH route objects in the data base for sub-blocks of 192.124.252.0/22, which begs the question: Why is the 192.124.252.0/22 markes as RIPE-NONAUTH? Regards, rfg

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Issue creating new AS-SET
by Denis Fondras 09 Jun '21

09 Jun '21

Hi all, I am trying to add a new AS-SET but I get an error : as-set: Syntax error in AS201376:AS-MEMBERS:DIRECT Here is the object I try to create : AS-SET: AS201376:AS-MEMBERS:DIRECT members: AS60983 TECH-C: DF5400-RIPE ADMIN-C: DF5400-RIPE MNT-BY: AUVERNIX-MNT MNT-BY: DF39378-MNT SOURCE: RIPE AS201376:AS-MEMBERS already exists in the database. I cannot see what I do wrong here. Can anybody help ? Also I tried to do some tests on the test DB but I get a 404 error when clicking 'submit'. I don't know if it is me or a bug. Thank you in advance. -- Denis Fondras / Liopen

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NWI-4 - role of status: field in multivalued status context - reprise
by Carsten Schiefner 08 Jun '21

08 Jun '21

Dear all - after a quick chat with Dennis on this, he encouraged me to toss this into the seemingly stalled, but not yet dead debate: Right now, only the "inet[6]num:" attribute is the primary key to, of or for inet[6]num objects. I wonder if it would be possible to make the tuple ("inet[6]num:","status:") the primary key instead: that should solve the challenge to have an assignment that shall have the size of an allocation. In case this has been exhaustedly discussed here already, please excuse my ignorance - I then obviously have failed to spot the respective contribution in the archives. All the best, -C.

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Re: [db-wg] "status:" attribute values in the RIPE database
by Edward Shryane 07 Jun '21

07 Jun '21

Hi Carsten, > On 7 Jun 2021, at 12:57, Carsten Schiefner <carsten(a)schiefner.de> wrote: > > Ed & all - > > makes sense to me, too. > > However: Instead of forcing this on the creator/updater of an object - > how about the NCC to be as liberal as possible (John Postel's law, the > robustness principle) and to accept any case combination, e.g. "aSSigNED > pi", but very conservatively keep the attribute sored in the DB in > uppercase only? > I agree, apologies I wasn't clear, by force the "status:" attribute value to uppercase, I mean that the value should be automatically changed to all-uppercase, and we should still accept the value in any case. Also, we should perform a cleanup on currently inconsistent values (affecting less than 1% of total inetnum and inet6num objects). Regards Ed > ATB, > > -C. >

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