Dear DB-WG, might there be a consent for introducing "ZZ" as an allowed value for the "country"-attribute for "unspecified"? Reasoning: - ISO 3166-1 [1] specifies "ZZ" as "User-assigned code elements are codes at the disposal of users who need to add further names of countries, territories, or other geographical entities to their in-house application of ISO 3166-1, and the ISO 3166/MA will never use these codes in the updating process of the standard.". - Many current entries do not specify the correct/meaningful value for country. Examples includes: [2a] RIPE-NCC-K-ROOT: NL [2b] TELTEK-1: GB, but: country is really Europe and Middle East [2c] ORG-AFNC1-RIPE: EU, but: country is really somewhere in African Region [2d] IANA-BBLK-RESERVED1: EU, but RFC1918 network [2e] EU-ZZ-163: EU, but: Country is really world wide [2f] LUXLINK-003: DE, but: These IP's are really World-Wide - For automated statistics it would be nice to have a special designation for IPs which do not correspond to a specific location, so that they are easy to filter. - It could be used for (global) anycast services, too. - ARIN & AfriNIC legacy entries could get a "correct" country. - Documentation says: "There are no rules defined for this attribute.", but the attribute is mandatory? Shouldn't we change that? Either make the attribute optional or specify, what it is supposed to contain. - I am dreaming: Wouldn't it be <http://dict.leo.org/ende?lp=ende&p=5tY9AA&search=desirable>desirable to have a designation for "world", too? - We already have a least on strange countries "EU", which does not seem to be part of ISO 3166-1... I'd like to hear your opinion... Best regards, Christian [1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1> [2a] <http://www.db.ripe.net/whois?searchtext=193.0.14.129&object_type=inetnum> [2b] <http://www.db.ripe.net/whois?searchtext=193.9.152.0&object_type=inetnum> [2c] <http://www.db.ripe.net/whois?searchtext=193.189.128.0&object_type=inetnum> [2d] <http://www.db.ripe.net/whois?searchtext=172.16.0.0&object_type=inetnum> [2e] <http://www.db.ripe.net/whois?searchtext=163.0.0.0&object_type=inetnum> [2f] <http://www.db.ripe.net/whois?searchtext=91.142.59.0&object_type=inetnum>