Summary

  • Leo Vegoda, one of three proposers of RIPE Database work item NWI-20, argued that operators should be able to list the communication channel they use. At RIPE 91 he asked for the slide about new methods to come before the slide about tidying old requirements.
  • The shipped Whois 1.122 change added an optional contact: field for several object types. It also made room for a # in a contact URI, where the older RPSL grammar could otherwise read the character as the start of a comment.

At RIPE 91's Database session, Leo Vegoda asked for two bullets to change places. The presentation led with harmonising the rules for person and role records. Vegoda wanted the new contact methods first. His point was deliciously human for a database meeting: people answer the channel they use. A perfectly formatted address in a mailbox no one opens is a very tidy way to miss an urgent message.

Vegoda was one of three people behind the NWI-20 proposal. The proposal sought more flexible ways to reach the administrative and technical contacts recorded in the RIPE Database. Signal was a concrete example. The old template carried requirements inherited from an era when a phone number and a postal address felt like the natural route to a person. Operators now arrange their working lives across messaging tools, ticket queues and email filters. The directory's contact fields had to meet the people who maintain networks.

The RIPE 91 transcript records Vegoda's practical objection to treating a valid email address as proof of reachability. Some providers accept a message and fail to put it in front of the recipient. An operator may keep an email address for formal traffic while checking another channel throughout the day. Vegoda wanted the person maintaining the record to show where a useful conversation could start.

RIPE NCC's Whois 1.122 release announcement shows what shipped. A new optional contact: attribute became available on person, role, organisation and irt objects. The person template now requires e-mail:; postal address: became optional on person and role, and phone: became optional on person. These are small schema changes with immediate social stakes: a maintainer can keep the mandatory email and add a preferred route, while removing a home address or phone number they no longer want exposed.

Then a single character walked into the room. A Signal link may contain # as a URI fragment. RPSL traditionally uses that character to begin a comment. The release announcement says the RIPE Database treats # inside contact: as part of the value, preserving the link. At RIPE 92, database product owner Ed Shryane explained the present exception and invited ideas for a broader rule. The phone book had learned a new address; its old punctuation rules had opinions about it.

The RIPE 92 minutes record NWI-20 as shipped and credit Vegoda's work. The change gives operators another way to tell the world how to reach them. The actual reply still happens between people. Vegoda's intervention moved that mundane fact to the front of the slide, where a contact directory should have put it years ago.