Dear all, Recently, we ran into some inconsistencies that resulted from the 'country:' attribute as used in 'inetnum:' objects. Hereby, I want to describe the (small) problems we found and propose possible solutions. Problem description: The RIPE NCC currently gets address space allocated from IANA for assignment to local registries in our working area. This allocated address space needs to registered in the RIPE database. Currently, we fill the country attribute with the value 'EU', but we feel that it is not the right representation since the address space is meant to be used for the whole working area of RIPE. Example: inetnum: 193.0.0.0 - 193.255.255.255 country: EU [ ... stuff deleted... ] The same problem exists for multinational registries that get address space allocated that is used in more then one country. Solutions: Since we are dealing with a small, though highly visible problem we need easy and quick fixes to avoid putting too much work in something that's not really worth it ;-). We present them here in order of our preference: 1) we allow multiple country codes in the 'country:' attribute and allow for multiple line 'country:' code attributes for long lists of country codes. Pros: Solves the problem completely, is politically correct, easy to implement Cons: Might be a little bit overkill, especially if you look at the number of countries in the RIPE area. 2) Make country attribute optional since it doesn't really matter were the address space is used Pros: Solves the problem completely, is politically correct, very easy to implement Cons: We loose some information that might be useful (for what?) 3) We invent new country codes for non-existing entities like EU. Pros: Solves the problem. Cons: not politically correct, we might need to define more names. We get discussions like EU is something else then the RIPE working area that is much bigger. We might need more different codes. We might get funny things when ISO is defining new country codes (that might be the same as our pseudo codes), which happens all to often in Europe and around... 4) A combination of the proposed solutions, e.g. make the attribute optional *and* allow multiple country codes. 5) We leave it as it is Pros: The easiest thing Cons: We keep the inconsistencies Please advise us. We have the idea that this topic is really something for an interesting academic debate ;-), though we feel that we need to do something to solve this problem! David Kessens RIPE NCC