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IRR Best Practices

This section details the technical side of how to use the Routing Registry and how to actually create and maintain objects on the DB in practice

 

Important notes

  1. Each RIR database is independent from the other RIRs databases.
  2. Creation of the route objects is based on the planned routing policy, other objects may be needed based on the specific case.
  3. Creation of routing objects doesn't mean that your routes will be advertised. You still need to configure BGP on your routers and complete the network setup with your transit/upstream providers.
  4. Existence of routing objects prevent your routes from being filtered in the Internet routing table - in cases where automated checks happen

 

Pre-requisites

Before an AFRINIC Resource Member can use the routing registry, there are some prerequisite information that the member needs to be aware of. Such information are shared with the registered contacts of the organisation in the AFRINIC Registry/Databases and therefore it’s critical that the person attempting to create, update route-related objects are aware of these.

  • Member is COC compliant
  • The minimum required objects, to create route(6) objects are:
    • Maintainer
  • The maintainer on the IP Number Resources?
  • The maintainer authentication (password, PGP key, X.509)
    • Aut-num
  • The autonomous system number(ASN) that shall originate the IPv4 or IPv6 prefix
    • Inetnum
  • In case you are trying to create the route object for your IPv4 prefix issued by AFRINIC
  • or inet6num
  • In case you are trying to create the route6 object for your IPv6 prefix issued by AFRINIC

If you are a legacy resource Holder and need help with your route objects, please contact us on irr@afrinic.net

 

Recommendations

AFRINIC recommends that:

  1. You ensure your membership account has no outstanding balance
  2. Contact details are updated after staff joins in or leave your company
  3. Maintainer passwords are kept up to date
  4. Avoid proxy registration to ensure full control of your routing policies and route objects. Proxy registration relate to cases where your upstream or another third party creates and maintains your route objects.
  5. If you hold resources from AFRINIC, have your route object registered in the AFRINIC IRR
  6. Migrate route objects from third-party IRRs to AFRINIC to avoid being filtered after housecleaning by the third-party IRR
  7. Encourage resource members to clean up the various registries to avoid inconsistencies using tools such as http://irrexplorer.nlnog.net
  8. Inform AFRINIC(via irr@afrinic.net) in case your upstream provider still insist to have the route objects created on other IRRs such as RIPE NCC
  9. Regarding changes in RIPE NCC’s IRR DB, Operators are encouraged to perform whois queries, specifying the source IRR with the source flag (-s or --sources). For example, if they only specify "RIPE", then no out of region objects will be returned. If no source flag is specified, then matches from both RIPE and RIPE-NONAUTH are returned.