Dear DB-WG, Speaking in individual capacity. In RFC 2622 section 5 specifies the naming convention for AS-SET objects. https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2622#section-5.1 There basically are two styles: * "short" (example: AS-SNIJDERS) * "hierarchical" (example: AS15562:AS-SNIJDERS) Problem statement ================= In recent weeks a number of hypergiant cloud providers have faced the thorny effects of adversarial AS-SET object naming collisions between IRR databases. An example of this phenomenon is the existence of AS-AMAZON in both RADB and RIPE. According to https://www.peeringdb.com/net/1418 the RADB copy of the object is the the correct one and populated with a number of members entries. The RIPE one is empty, and not under control of Amazon. The existence of the AS-AMAZON object in the RIPE database might cause some operators to inadvertently apply empty prefix-filters to EBGP sessions which in turn causes various problems. It seems Amazon has no recourse to get the AS-AMAZON object removed from the RIPE database; because the existence of that object in the RIPE database does not violate any policies (as far as I know). But perhaps, going forward, this community can do a little bit more to help prevent similar situations from happening to others. Solution proposal ================= I think the solution is to - GOING FORWARD - disallow creation of new AS-SET objects which follow the 'short' naming style. The advantage of hierarchical naming is that the existing authorization rules as applied by the RIPE Whois Server database engine do a decent job of protecting/separating namespaces. 'Grandfathering' existing short-named objects ensures that implementation of this solution proposal causes minimal (if any) disruption to existing workflows. The RIPE database engine blocking creation of short-named AS-SETs might help nudge the industry towards making hierarchical naming the norm. Related work ============ Related work throughout the registry industry: IRRd version 4 forces new AS-SET objects to be structured hierarchically: https://github.com/irrdnet/irrd/issues/408 Kind regards, Job