Create and verify a role object

A role object shall describe a business function or operational unit and may reference the individual people responsible for this activity. Using roleobjects makes large-scale changes easier. The principle is the same if you have ten objects or 10,000 objects in the database. However, problems most commonly occur when dealing with a very large number of objects. A role or person object can be used everywhere that requires a reference to a contact, with only a couple of exceptions where it must be one type or the other.

In practice, AFRINIC Resource members are encouraged to use role objects and update them, whenever there is a change in the registered contacts.

Follow the steps below:

• On the Afrinic Whois client, click on "Create Object" tab.
• You will have to load the role object template into the web whois client. To do this, tick the checkbox next to "role" and click on "Load";

• The role object template will be shown.

  

   

• Fill and submit the object template with specific data. (If in doubt what to fill for a specific attribute value, hover your cursor over the templates' attributes on the right for more details)

1. The "role" attribute specifies the full name of a role entity, e.g. NOC Team. (This should be a list of at least 2 words separated by white space)
2. Complete the "address:" attribute with your address as the name suggests
3. Same for the "email:" attribute.
4. The "admin-c" attribute references an on-site administrative contact. (This would be the "nic-handle" of the person object matching the contact.)
5. Same for the "tech-c" attribute which references a technical contact.
6. Leave the "nic-handle:" and "source:" attribute as it has already been specified.
7. Complete the "changed:" attribute with the email and date of the person making the changes (e.g. changed:  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it 20130731). If the date is not specified, it will be system generated.
8. The "source" field is already filled for you.
9. Click on "Create" when all the required attribute values have been filled.

• After successful creation of the role object, you shall get the screen below. You will notice the NIC handle automatically assigned by the database in this example is NT132-AFRINIC.

• The password of the auto-generated mntner will be sent to the e-mail address(es) specified in the "e-mail" attribute(s). You will need to provide this password when updating/deleting the role object.

• You may query the Whois to verify the role object. E.g "-rB NOC Deparment" or "-rB ND26-AFRINIC" will output the current version of the object in the database.