Re: [weirds] draft-newton-et-al-weirds-rir-query-00

[Alessandro Vesely <[e-mail]>]

On 24/Sep/11 17:45, Andy Newton wrote:
> On Sep 24, 2011, at 11:41 AM, Alessandro Vesely wrote:
> 
>> However, the zero-or-one rule can be path-specific.  Another kind of
>> query, namely rdns, can return a list without compromising overall
>> consistency.  BTW, I don't think it is necessary for rdns' argument
>> and results to be in in-addr.arpa format: that only introduces a
>> difficulty when clients have to compare or generate such values.
> 
> Can you provide examples of what you are talking about here?

Sure.  To get the delegation chain I'd use

   get http://restwhois.net/rdns/192.0.2.87

instead of the "in-addr.arpa format"

   get http://restwhois.net/rdns/87.2.0.192.in-addr.arpa

I'd imagine the answer --in plain text, for simplicity-- can be
something like this:

   192.0.2.87
   192.0.2.80/26
   192.0.2.0/24

Now I can take any element from the list, for example the second, and
use it as a link to an operator query

   get http://restwhois.net/ip/192.0.2.80/26/operator

The other way around, I start with, say,

   get http://restwhois.net/ip/192.0.2.87/contacts/abuse

and get

   inetnum: 192.0.2.80/26
   email: [e-mail]

Assume I'm not satisfied with this, e.g. because [e-mail]
bounces.  To get it's next-level-up contact I can use the inetnum from
the result, or the same IP I started with.  That is, I'd query
respectively

   get http://restwhois.net/rdns/192.0.2.80/26

(which I'd imagine returns just two items), or

   get http://restwhois.net/rdns/192.0.2.87

In the latter case I can reckon that the sought item must be the
third, but may still want to check that the second item compares equal
to the inetnum returned on the previous query.  If the other format is
used, both comparison and argument passing require an extra variable
where the bytes are reversed and ".in-addr.arpa" appended, a a
function that is cumbersome and error-prone to write if it's not
provided in the environment.

>> We should target web and mail usage on equal terms, though.
> 
> What do you mean by that?

If we assume that clients operate in typical web environments, we may
come up with solutions that are hard to deploy for mail filters.