In message <6d7c9cf4-7a83-fa1a-d013-d7f89c9c964f@dotat.at>, Tony Finch <dot@dotat.at> wrote:
I have complained before that RIPE's whois server ought to provide proper referrals when the database has information about which RIR is responsible for an address block.
As I mentioned earlier I rather dislike the words "complain", "complaint", "complaining", or "complained" in this context. I personally would prefer to say that you attempted to assist RIPE NCC in improving the output of the RIPE WHOIS server for the benefit of the entire worldwide Internet community. In any case, I cannot help but note that neither RIPE nor ARIN nor any other RIR would need to provide referrals for number resource queries if only the whois.iana.org server were consistantly giving out proper referrals. (It isn't.) I don't know who pays those IANA people or who thus controls their tasking and priorities. All I know is that it isn't me. So I have neither any right nor any leverage which I could persuade them to fix the obvious brokeness of their WHOIS server, and even if I did, completion of the task might possibly be mesurable on a geologic time scale. So I just count myself lucky that there is some other basis on which to reliably determine which RIR owns what, i.e. the daily RIR stats files. Regards, rfg