While discussing IRR on some groups recently, I was thinking if there can be (and if there is) cycling dependency in filtering where IRR (run by whoever APNIC, RIPE, RADB etc) uses some upstream and accepts only routes with existing & valid route object.
So hypothetical case (can apply to any IRR):
APNIC registry source is whois.apnic.net and points to 202.12.28.136 / 2001:dc0:1:0:4777::136. The aggregate of both these has a valid route object at the APNIC registry itself.
Their upstreams say AS X, Y and Z have tooling in place to generate and push filters by checking all popular IRRs. All is well till this point.
Say APNIC has some server/service issue for a few mins and X Y and Z are updating their filters at the same time. They cannot contact whois.apnic.net and hence miss generating filters for all APNIC IRR hosted prefixes.
X, Y and Z drop APNIC prefixes including those of IRR & the loop goes on from this point onwards.
So my question is: Can that actually happen?
If not, do X, Y and Z and possible all upstreams till default-free zone treat these prefixes in a special manner to avoid such loop in resolution?