Re: Why are paper LOAs still used?

[Christopher Hawker <chris () thesysadmin au>]

Hi Seth,

LOAs can't be considered more trustworthy than IRR objects. The RIRs operate IRRdb services as part of the services 
they offer which network operators should be using instead of the free and paid non-authoritative IRRdb operators.

If you don’t mind, could you please reach out to me off-list with who the VPS hosting provider is that is only 
accepting LOAs? I’d like to reach out to them to discuss their decision.

I’m doing a talk at APRICOT 2024 on using ROAs to replace LOAs. In my view there's no reason why network operators 
cannot use ROAs instead to validate the routes received from their peers, be they upstream or downstream.

Regards,
Christopher Hawker


Sent from my iPhone

On 27 Feb 2024, at 1:57 am, Seth Mattinen via NANOG <nanog () nanog org> wrote:

Why do companies still insist on, or deploy new systems that rely on paper LOA for IP and ASN resources? How can this 
be considered more trustworthy than RIR based IRR records?

And I'm not even talking about old companies, I have a situation right now where a VPS provider I'm using will no 
longer use IRR and only accepts new paper LOAs. In the year 2024. I don't understand how anyone can go backwards like 
that.

~Seth