1. Shane Kerr. RIPE 45, May 2003, Barcelona. http://www.ripe.net 1 Contact Data in the RIPE Database Shane Kerr RIPE NCC

2. Shane Kerr. RIPE 45, May 2003, Barcelona. http://www.ripe.net 2 Background & Goal Certain kinds of data have caused problems –Domain objects (heavy use by ccTLD’s) –Person objects (heavy use by ccTLD’s, etc.) Cleanups have been made in the past –Consistency fixes –Deletions of unnecessary data, one-time and ongoing Small numbers of “inconsistencies” not a problem Perform some measurement of data quality

3. Shane Kerr. RIPE 45, May 2003, Barcelona. http://www.ripe.net 3 Contact Data Contacts are: –Referenced by resources recorded in the Database –Administrative or technical Contacts have: –Name –Postal address –Phone number –E-mail address

4. Shane Kerr. RIPE 45, May 2003, Barcelona. http://www.ripe.net 4 Focus on e-mail Name impossible to check Postal address/phone number difficult to check E-mail possible –Sadly optional for person objects

5. Shane Kerr. RIPE 45, May 2003, Barcelona. http://www.ripe.net 5 Checking the addresses 1.Unique e-mail extracted (about 500,000 in all) 2.Syntax check to remove garbage and bad TLD 3.Unique domains extracted (about 280,000 in all) 4.DNS checked Algorithm from RFC 2821 MX lookups, with fallback to A lookups 5.SMTP checked VRFY unreliable Use RSET, MAIL, RCPT for each e-mail Minimise connections (only 140,000 unique IP’s)

6. Shane Kerr. RIPE 45, May 2003, Barcelona. http://www.ripe.net 6 E-mail results

7. Shane Kerr. RIPE 45, May 2003, Barcelona. http://www.ripe.net 7 “Refusal” Codes

8. Shane Kerr. RIPE 45, May 2003, Barcelona. http://www.ripe.net 8 Interpreting the Results 20% of e-mail addresses can never be reached 80% may still fail –Depends on mail software and configuration –Impossible to check further without delivering mail –Even delivered mail may never be read

9. Shane Kerr. RIPE 45, May 2003, Barcelona. http://www.ripe.net 9 aut-num results

10. Shane Kerr. RIPE 45, May 2003, Barcelona. http://www.ripe.net 10 inetnum results A significant percentage of inetnum objects have no valid e-mail address. A much smaller percentage of actual IP addresses has no valid e- mail address, but still a significant amount. Most of these are because the “e-mail:” attribute is optional in the person object. objects IP addresses reachable non-reachable no e-mail

11. Shane Kerr. RIPE 45, May 2003, Barcelona. http://www.ripe.net 11 Conclusions & Questions Many networks have no reachable contacts “e-mail:” being optional is a significant reason Is this a problem? If so, how big of a problem? Possible actions: –Make “e-mail:” mandatory –Check e-mail reachability on person creation/update –Put a “remark:” on networks with unreachable contacts –Return parent networks if contacts unreachable