ACSP Suggestion 2013.22: Sunsetting of RWhois support

Suggestion

Author: Andrew Dul   
Submitted On: 11 October 2013

Description:

With the new restful services now available to organizations, perhaps now is the time to consider sun-setting the old rwhois support.

This is not a request for ARIN to immediately remove support for rwhois but a request for ARIN to engage the community to determine if a timeline should be set to deprecate support for rwhois.

Timeframe: Indefinite

Status: Closed   Updated: 30 March 2018

Tracking Information

ARIN Comment

14 November 2013

Thank you for your suggestion numbered 2013.22 - Sunsetting of rwhois support.

A new protocol called RDAP is being created within the IETF by the WEIRDS Working Group. RDAP is envisioned to replace Rwhois services. Once the standard is finalized, ARIN will work on the following two activities:

  1. Make ARIN’s existing RESTful directory Service compliant with the RDAP IETF standard.

  2. If there is community demand, ARIN will create a public domain implementation of a stand-alone RDAP server. This package can then be used as a replacement of Rwhois for those ISPS that currently run Rwhois.

Additionally, some policy action and/or community consultation will need to be completed to RWhois with this new emerging RDAP standard.

Thank you for participating in the ARIN suggestion process and note that we will leave this suggestion open until we can begin work on the activities described above.

ARIN Comment

28 March 2014

Implementation Estimate: It will be 3 person months to create a public domain implementation of the server. When the specifications are completed, ARIN will make any required changes to the current server that currently matches the draft – server located at https://rdappilot.arin.net/restfulwhois/rdap .

Please note that these are good-faith, general estimates to include development, testing, and implementation; as such they are subject to change.

ARIN Comment

30 March 2018

Thank you for your suggestion, numbered 2013.22 upon confirmed receipt, requesting that we consult with the ARIN community about the possibility of sunsetting support of Rwhois services.

ARIN intentionally held back the issuance of a community consultation on this suggestion until after RDAP had been deployed. We then conducted a community consultation on the “Available Methods of Reporting Network Sub-delegation Information”, which included consideration for SWIP, Rwhois, and RDAP, at the end of 2017. As part of this consultation, we called out the question of continuing support for Rwhois. The full text of the consultation is available at:
https://www.arin.net/participate/acsp/community_consult/10-02-2017_rwhois.html

Based on the feedback received through the consultation, we have determined that it is the community’s desire that we continue to support Rwhois, at this time. The archive of the discussion is available at:
http://lists.arin.net/pipermail/arin-consult/2017-October/thread.html