Suppose that I am a "new" ISP in Greece and I want to "steal" some of the market share here.
I have two ways:
1- Read the RIPE DB info and find out who the customers are 2- traceroute to major potential customers and find out who the ISPs are
I do not think that this is a problem with the RIPE DB.
Oh, but it is. Think about it. With traceroute, I would need to start tracing all the customer I can think of. This will require a lot of time, AND will be based on my good guess as to which customers belong to that company I am trying to steal customers from. Lots of guesswork, no accuracy guarantee, and days of work. With the RIPE DB, all I need is their AS number. Then I can find the route objects related to it, and then a simple recursive query will give me their full, 100% accurate customer list, with addresses, phone numbers and every info I need (including the size of their network, which could point to the size of the company). No guesswork, 100% accuracy, 15 minute work. :-) 10x again, Sincerely, \'"'/ Barak Engel ( o o ) ---------------------ooOO-^-oOOo--------------------------- barak@netvision.net.il Network Expert BE-RIPE BE174 Phone/Fax: +972 48 560600/551132 Cellular: +972 50 469 341 -----------------------------------------------------------