[db-wg] Route(6) objects

Dear Kaupo, others,

(Speaking as individual working group contributor.)

On Mon, Jul 10, 2023 at 10:06:30AM +0300, Kaupo Ehtnurm via db-wg wrote:
> Since route6 object is a must and ROA is a should and they ultimately
> fill the same purpose, than why isn't there a "max length" in route6
> object? 

That's a good question!

The specification of IRR 'route6:' objects pre-dates the specification
of RPKI ROAs by a number of years. One explanation might be that the
designers of RPSL-NG simply didn't think of it.

Another aspect is that RPKI ROAs are used as an input into the RFC 6811
Origin Validation procedure (which yields invalid/valid/not-found as
outcomes), but no such algorithm existed when RPSL-NG route/route6
objects were defined. I can see how RPKI ROAs and RPSL-NG route/route6
objects look kind of similar from a high level, but the devil is in the
details: they do fulfill slightly different purposes.

It's important to note that in recent years new insights arose how to
make the best use of RPKI ROAs: last year's BCP 185 / RFC 9319
recommends to avoid using the maxLength attribute in RPKI ROAs.

Porting 'maxLength' functionality to RPSL-NG route/route6 objects would
represent a significant community effort: people would need to write an
Internet-Draft to specify what the field really means, and lots of
software toolchains would need updating. Given that maxLength in RPKI
ROAs was not universially perceived as a good idea, I'm not very
optimistic that porting such functionality to the 'legacy' IRR system is
worth the effort.

Kind regards,

Job