Ability to validate AMPRnet prefixes

[bswinnerton]

Today in the BGPeople Discord, Zach of AS206699 asked if Neptune had a way of verifying AMPRnet prefixes other than via email whois (which validates the entire /9). Let's look into ways this can be done safely.

[bswinnerton]

It appears that one way to validate these would be via portal.ampr.org, for example: https://portal.ampr.org/networks.php?a=region&id=192. This isn't automatable, though.

[natesales]

While this is far from ideal, it's possible to parse the portal information to discern the callsign and then perform a lookup to get the name/organization that has been assigned that call. Although not really production-ready, ampr-whois.natesales.net returns a fake mntner with the blocks callsign:

➜  ~ whois -h ampr-whois.natesales.net 44.26.163.0/24
% This is the unofficial AMPRNet WHOIS server.
% Data provided by this server is subject to AMPRNet Terms of Use
% available at http://www.ampr.org
%
% MNTNERs don't have a corresponding mntner object and are generated from
% the callsign of the block in the format of AMPR-MNT-CALLSIGN
%
% To report a data error, contact the AMPRNet portal administrator: https://portal.ampr.org/contact-us.php
% To report a whois daemon or server error, contact ampr-whois@natesales.net

inetnum:  44.26.163.0/24
descr:    Nathan Sales
mnt-by:   AMPR-MNT-KJ7DMC
changed:  ampr-whois@natesales.net 20200608
remarks:  This inetnum object represents data extracted from the AMPRNet portal.
remarks:  Original data can be found here: https://portal.ampr.org/networks.php?a=region&id=301
source:   AMPR

And the FCC has a public (but slow and lacking modern ciphers) API: https://data.fcc.gov/api/license-view/basicSearch/getLicenses?format=json&searchValue=KJ7DMC

[ewpratten]

Just query RADb. AMPR users who want to announce their space are supposed to request an entry anyways, so the data is mostly all there (except for the occasional person who doesn't remember to ask for an entry)