Hi Daniel,
the real problem with the "connect" attribute is that it still is the badly defined kludge it has been from the start. I can say so because I invented it. Today we have a well defined and agreed way of specifying the information you want: It is called ripe-81 by the document fans and "The Routing Registry" by afficionados.
I had one and only one basic concern: when we put info into the DB, this info should HELP and not CONFUSE. I agree with you that "connect:" is maybe far from optimal.
In my opinion we should put our efforts in getting the RR populated rather than trying to specify how to use an un-specifyable kludge.
So now I've got another concern: populating the RR helps the "afficionados", but probably doesn't help the (end-)user in finding out what he/she can expect. I'd assume people are still thinking in terms of NORDUnet, NSF, RIPE and not in terms of ASxxx and ASyyy. And the basic issue remains - you can just as well put some string into the "as-*:" fields and still have only EARN-E-Mail connectivity...
The original plan was to keep connect alive with the only legal value of LOCAL. Maybe we shouldn't even do this. An item for discussion at the RIPE meeting!
Definitely! And thanks for spending some minutes on it. Cheers, Wilfried.