Hi DB-WG,

Apologies if this has been discussed before;

I recently transferred my personal ASN from RIPE to ARIN.  One of the side effects of this, is that the IANA whois, has a referral to RIPE for the entire block of ASNs that my ASN was part of, but of course, the RIPE whois now returns a message stating that the ASN is no longer in the RIPE region, and lists out the other RIRs - but no hints into which one is now responsible (Certainly not so a machine can follow along) - below is the output;

refer:        whois.ripe.net

as-block:     34816-35839
organisation: Assigned by RIPE NCC

whois:        whois.ripe.net
descr:        Assigned by RIPE NCC

changed:      2005-02
source:       IANA

whois.ripe.net

as-block:       AS35008 - AS35008
descr:          ASN block not managed by the RIPE NCC
remarks:        ------------------------------------------------------
remarks:
remarks:        aut-num objects within this block represent routing
remarks:        policy published in the RIPE Database
remarks:
remarks:        For registration information,
remarks:        you can find the whois server to query, or the
remarks:        IANA registry to query on this web page:
remarks:        http://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv4-address-space
remarks:
remarks:        You can access databases of other RIR's at:
remarks:
remarks:        AFRINIC (Africa)
remarks:        http://www.afrinic.net/ whois.afrinic.net
remarks:
remarks:        APNIC (Asia Pacific)
remarks:        http://www.apnic.net/ whois.apnic.net
remarks:
remarks:        ARIN (Northern America)
remarks:        http://www.arin.net/ whois.arin.net
remarks:
remarks:        LACNIC (Latin America and the Carribean)
remarks:        http://www.lacnic.net/ whois.lacnic.net
remarks:
remarks:        ------------------------------------------------------
mnt-by:         RIPE-DBM-MNT
created:        2023-06-30T06:35:17Z
last-modified:  2023-06-30T06:35:17Z
source:         RIPE

Would it make sense, for the RIPE whois to also include a refer entry, much like that of the IANA whois? In my case, this could be a refer: whois.arin.net entry, in the hope that the whois client follows along and gets the correct record.  Of course, the ultimate solution here would be IANA putting a record for the absolute ASN into their data, and sending the whois client along to the now correct whois server.

Cheers,

--Lee