RE: IETF-51 WhoisFix BoF Announcement

At 2:04 PM -0700 8/1/01, Randy Bush wrote:
>conjecture: the dominant *legitimate* use of whois today has not been
>mentioned.
>
>nerd logic:
>   o spam scrapers are not counted, as they are not legitimate in my book
>   o other uses of domain and addres whois lookup are not automated
>   o the one big automated use is router config builds using the routing
>     registries

In the Whois BoF at IETF 49, three major uses of Whois were identified:

     o Registries, registrars, etc. for domain names
     o RIRs for IP allocations, ASNs, etc.
     o RRs for routing policy data

(Other people can probably categorize these more eloquently, but 
hopefully the idea is clear.)  There are certainly other 
applications, but this list feels right in terms of common uses on 
the public Internet.

It seems reasonable that the WhoisFix effort should attempt to 
address all three of these uses, so certainly we should be thinking 
about the RRs.

I'll venture another legitimate use, but won't speculate about its 
dominance relative to router config builds:  transfers of domain 
names between ICANN-accredited registrars.

Jordyn