Even if it could mean that email might also be broken that is not necessarily the case.

Many companies use cloud services for email so they might be completely unaffected by their network issues.

Also just because something is broken doesn't mean it's so broken email stops working.

And of course, PBX systems can also experience issues if there is a big incident with the network.

You also have to consider that there might not be a PBX system or a dedicated NOC number even for some companies that might still have 10-20 employees.

While I do get your point, I stand firm in thinking that the networks can decide if they want to accept calls or not themselves.

I would like to know if my network is experiencing issues but we have emails and personally I feel comfortable relying on them to work well enough seeing as they are with an external provider that has nothing to do with my network.


-Cynthia


On Wed, May 25, 2022, 17:07 Gert Doering <gert@space.net> wrote:
Hi,

On Wed, May 25, 2022 at 04:50:57PM +0200, Cynthia Revström wrote:
> P.S. Yes all of these networks could just use role objects and as such
> not have to publish phone numbers but I argued for why they shouldn't
> be required as it seemed to me like Gert didn't quite understand why I
> think it is a bad idea to require them, beyond the inconsistency.

Maybe I expressed myself badly.  I was primarily describing my use
case "why would I want to look at *anything* in the RIPE-DB" - and
that is, usually, because something is broken and I find myself in
the need to contact people.  In that situation, their network might
be broken (or mine, or something in between) so e-mail or a web
form might just not work - this is why we have a phone system.

If nothing is broken, I do not look at person or role objects at all.


That said, of course having "no phone number" is a better data set
than "a phone number that looks good to the DB but is useless" :-)

*That* said - if people do not want to be contacted about issues with
their network, then we should ask ourselves if putting these contacts
into the RIPE-DB is the correct thing to do - phone numbers or not -
to me this is the prime reason we store contact data there, to reach
responsible persons/teams when there is something with their network
that needs attention.


On this particular discussion: I agree that it makes no sense to have
the phone number optional on a role: (*this* is usually a NOC that has
a phone...) and mandatory on a person: - make it optional on both.

Gert Doering
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