RFC 2280 (rfc2280) - Page 3 of 53

Routing Policy Specification Language (RPSL)

RFC 2280                          RPSL                      January 1998


   RPSL was designed so that a view of the global routing policy can be
   contained in a single cooperatively maintained distributed database
   to improve the integrity of Internet's routing.  RPSL is not designed
   to be a router configuration language.  RPSL is designed so that
   router configurations can be generated from the description of the
   policy for one autonomous system (aut-num class) combined with the
   description of a router (inet-rtr class), mainly providing router ID,
   autonomous system number of the router, interfaces and peers of the
   router, and combined with a global database mappings from AS sets to
   ASes (as-set class), and from origin ASes and route sets to route
   prefixes (route and route-set classes).  The accurate population of
   the RPSL database can help contribute toward such goals as router
   configurations that protect against accidental (or malicious)
   distribution of inaccurate routing information, verification of
   Internet's routing, and aggregation boundaries beyond a single AS.

   RPSL is object oriented; that is, objects contain pieces of policy
   and administrative information.  These objects are registered in the
   Internet Routing Registry (IRR) by the authorized organizations.  The
   registration process is beyond the scope of this document.  Please
   refer to [1, 15, 2] for more details on the IRR.

   In the following sections, we present the classes that are used to
   define various policy and administrative objects.  The "mntner" class
   defines entities authorized to add, delete and modify a set of
   objects.  The "person" and "role" classes describes technical and
   administrative contact personnel.  Autonomous systems (ASes) are
   specified using the "aut-num" class.  Routes are specified using the
   "route" class.  Sets of ASes and routes can be defined using the
   "as-set" and "route-set" classes.  The "dictionary" class provides
   the extensibility to the language.  The "inet-rtr" class is used to
   specify routers.  Many of these classes were originally defined in
   earlier documents [4, 11, 14, 10, 3] and have all been enhanced.

   This document is self-contained.  However, the reader is encouraged
   to read RIPE-181 [5] and the associated documents [11, 14, 10, 3] as
   they provide significant background as to the motivation and
   underlying principles behind RIPE-181 and consequently, RPSL. For a
   tutorial on RPSL, the reader should read the RPSL applications
   document [2].

2 RPSL Names, Reserved Words, and Representation

   Each class has a set of attributes which store a piece of information
   about the objects of the class.  Attributes can be mandatory or
   optional: A mandatory attribute has to be defined for all objects of





Alaettinoglu, et. al.       Standards Track