On Jan 17, 2012, at 3:15 PM, Nick Hilliard wrote:

> ...
> It looks like the semantics of the "-M" flag to the RIPE DB changed.  This
> flag requests more-specific prefixes.  Previously, it would accept an
> address range of the form 192.168.0.0 - 192.168.255.255, but now it insists
> on using netmask format.  I.e. 192.168.0.0/16. ...

Hello Nick,

Thank you for the patch. Just wanted to clarify the issue over the '-M' query flag. The RIPE NCC would never make a change in functionality like this without getting community approval and proper communication. The syntax of '-M' has not changed at all. As we investigated further, the asused misbehavior is caused by the whois server acting weird with the '-k' flag. We are working to fix that as soon as possible and will have a fix in production very shortly.

We will always do our best to keep all existing tools work with the RIPE Database, even when new features are introduced. We know many users have existing tools/processes tied to the current behavior and it is not always easy to migrate from an existing and working toolset to a new one. That's why we are committed to keeping the system backward compatible.

All the best,
Kaveh.

---
Kaveh Ranjbar
RIPE NCC Database Group Manager