Colleagues Do you use the RIPE Database as your IPAM solution? If so, read on....
The RIPE NCC has done a brief review of the recommendations made by the DB Task Force (DBTF). You can find it here: https://www.ripe.net/participate/ripe/tf/rdb-requirements-tf/initial-analysis-implementation-ripe-dbtf-recommendations.pdf There is one point in the summary that I disagree with: One recommendation can be implemented immediately by the RIPE NCC: - 3. Using the RIPE Database as an IPAM solution The recommendation from the DBTF was: "The task force recommends limiting and discouraging the use of the RIPE Database as an enterprise IPAM solution." This has not yet been discussed by the community and there is no consensus on this recommendation. So the RIPE NCC should not be doing anything to implement this recommendation. There are a number of points relating to this. The first BoF held by the DBTF had 46 participants. They had some polls about IPAM: Where do you hold your canonical IP address assignment details? (13 answers) Internal database or IPAM system (5 - 38%) RIPE Database (5 - 38%) Internal database for detailed assignments and RIPE database for allocations (3 - 23%) What should we do about the IPAM use of the RIPE Database? (12 answers) We should discourage it (3-25%) We should tolerate it but provide restrictions and best practices (5-42%) We should promote it and facilitate it (4-33%) During the BoF some comments were also made on this: Shane's comment "IPAM seems to be an important thing" Nathalie said about 50% of people attending training courses over a number of years said they use the RIPE DB for IPAM. Also trainees said open source IPAM solutions often pull data out of the RIPE DB but have no functionality to push data to the RIPE DB. During the presentation by the DBTF in the DB-WG session at RIPE 83 Shane said (on IPAM): "if you had very light requirements for IPAM then maybe it is OK, but it's not really what it's for" "unable to find out if this [response] was based on misunderstanding of the question" "we think there are probably good ways to go forward with that, for example making hooks so that external IPAM solutions can hook into it...that makes sense, there are certainly many commercial vendors that make IPAM products who would be happy to use hooks, there are many ways that third parties could use this but probably not a requirement" So it looks like there are very mixed views on the use of the RIPE Database for IPAM. Some people also expressed surprise that so many people use the database for IPAM. It is clear that we don't actually understand who, how and why people use the database for IPAM. We need a better understanding of the how and why and the number of users doing this before we can make any decision about discouraging or encouraging this use of the database. Even to consider if IPAM should be defined as a purpose of the database. As we are talking about it, maybe now is the time to start this discussion. If you use the RIPE Database as your IPAM solution maybe you can offer some more details. cheers denis co-chair DB-WG -- To unsubscribe from this mailing list, get a password reminder, or change your subscription options, please visit: https://lists.ripe.net/mailman/listinfo/db-wg
