The problem is that the Whois system for IP numbers is not organised hierarchically (like DNS). So you have to use tricks to go down the list of delegations to find the final one... There ough to be an RFC? Franck Martin Network and Database Development Officer SOPAC South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission Fiji E-mail: franck@sopac.org <mailto:franck@sopac.org> Web site: http://www.sopac.org/ <http://www.sopac.org/> Support FMaps: http://fmaps.sourceforge.net/ <http://fmaps.sourceforge.net/> Certificate: https://www.sopac.org/ssl/ This e-mail is intended for its addresses only. Do not forward this e-mail without approval. The views expressed in this e-mail may not be necessarily the views of SOPAC. -----Original Message----- From: Markku Savela [mailto:msa@burp.tkv.asdf.org] Sent: Wednesday, 14 August 2002 9:19 To: Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu Cc: ietf@ietf.org Subject: Re: Why spam is a problem. > From: Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu > The problem is that ARIN is sending a bill to the owner of a /8 that it > has to forward to the owner of the delegated /15 who sold bandwidth to > a /24 - and the activity isn't violating the AUP of the /8 (remember, > they only sell connectivity - and you do NOT want to get into content-based > stuff - there's a reason why 17 USC 512 gives a safe-harbor to ISPs regarding > their users).