irrc

irrc is a lightweight and flexible client of IRR / Whois Database to expand arbitrary as-set and route-set objects into a list of origin ASs and prefixes belonging to those ASs. It will concurrently queries multiple IRR / Whois Databases for performance.

Features

• Fast. irrc runs multi-threaded micro clients to process simultaneous IRR / Whois queries for performance. It also uses object caches.
• Handy. irrc's CLI client provides an easy way to resolve prefixes from as-set and route-set objects. It works even when multiple objects given as arguments.
• Dual stack. irrc returns both IPv4 and IPv6 prefixes by default. There is no need to kick a command twice for dual stacked result.
• Flexible. irrc provides an extensible ruby library which allows to modify IRR / Whois queries more flexibly.
• Pretty print. irrc shows prefixes in YAML format like this.
• Pure ruby. irrc doesn't depend on any other ruby gem.
• Lightweight. irrc is designed to gather prefixes from arbitrary as-set and route-set. It's implemented as simple as possible to achieve that. In other words, domain name related features are not supported.

Installation

For bundler:

gem 'irrc'

And then:

$ bundle

Otherwise:

$ gem install irrc

Usage

CLI

irrc privides a peval-like CLI interface.

• Query JPIRR about AS-JPNIC and AS-OCN

  $ irrc -h jpirr AS-JPNIC AS-OCN
  

• Query JPIRR about AS-JPNIC with authoritative IRR (SOURCE:) based filter

  $ irrc -h jpirr -s radb -s apnic AS-JPNIC
  

• Query JPIRR about AS-JPNIC for IPv4 only

  $ irrc -h jpirr -4 AS-JPNIC
  

As a Library

You can load irrc as a library and use it easily in your own code.

require 'irrc'

client = Irrc::Client.new
client.query(:jpirr, 'AS-JPNIC', source: :jpirr)    # queries JPIRR about AS-JPNIC with a SOURCE: filter
client.query(:ripe, 'AS-RIPENCC', protocol: :ipv4)  # queries RIPE Whoisd about AS-RIPENCC for IPv4 only
client.perform                                      # returns the results in a Hash

Example

$ irrc -h jpirr AS-JPNIC

will result in a YAML:

---
AS-JPNIC:               # queried object
  :ipv4:
    AS2515:             # AS-JPNIC has AS2515 as a origin AS
    - 202.12.30.0/24    # 4 IPv4 prefixes belonging to AS2515
    - 192.41.192.0/24   #
    - 211.120.240.0/21  #
    - 211.120.248.0/24  #
  :ipv6:
    AS2515:
    - 2001:0fa0::/32
    - 2001:dc2::/32
    - 2001:DC2::/32

Supported Ruby Versions

• Ruby >= 2.0.0

Successfully tested with 2.0.0, 2.1.0, 2.1.1, 2.1.2.

Threading

irrc will send queries to multiple IRR / Whois servers simultaneously in multi-threads. Single-thread processing for each server by default.

To configure the number of threads per server:

CLI

$ irrc -h jpirr -t 2 AS-JPNIC AS-OCN  # 2 threads to query JPIRR

AS a Library

client = Irrc::Client.new(2)  # 2 threads per IRR / Whois server

Debugging

irrc uses STDERR printer for a logger by default, which reports more severe messages than INFO.

CLI

To display debug information including raw messages of IRR / Whois protocol:

$ irrc -h jpirr -d AS-JPNIC

As a Library

To use modified Logger:

client = Irrc::Client.new {|c| c.logger = Rails.logger }

Quick Benchmark

Here is a quick performance comparison with peval and irrpt.

• Ordinary as-set

CLI command	user	system	cpu	total
peval -h jpirr.nic.ad.jp AS-OCN	0.14s	0.04s	1%	9.397
irrpt_eval AS-OCN	0.35s	0.06s	5%	8.021
irrc -h jpirr AS-OCN	0.42s	0.09s	4%	10.639

• Huge as-set

Object caching may contribute to the query performance.

CLI command	user	system	cpu	total
peval -h jpirr.nic.ad.jp AS-HURRICANE	67.29s	1.21s	22%	4:58.16
irrpt_eval AS-HURRICANE	163.10s	1.38s	43%	6:18.17
irrc -h jpirr AS-HURRICANE	20.26s	1.84s	7%	4:54.37

• Multiple as-set

Multi-threading and object caching may contribute to the query performance.

CLI command	user	system	cpu	total
for i in AS-HURRICANE AS-GBLX; peval -h jpirr.nic.ad.jp $i	76.47s	1.08s	20%	6:15.80
irrpt_fetch	174.21s	1.29s	44%	6:38.50
irrc -h jpirr AS-HURRICANE AS-GBLX	22.28s	1.75s	8%	4:34.31
irrc -h jpirr -t 2 AS-HURRICANE AS-GBLX	23.04s	1.81s	9%	4:09.27

Contributing

Please fork it, fix and then send a pull request. :tada:

To run tests just type:

$ rake

Please report issues or enhancement requests to GitHub issues. For questions or feedbacks write to my twitter @codeout.

Copyright and License

Copyright (c) 2014 Shintaro Kojima. Code released under the MIT license.