Mar Uwho Requirements Gathering Andrew Newton Mark Kosters Leslie Daigle VeriSign Labs APNIC 13, March 2002

Mar UWhat? Universal Whois VeriSign has committed undertaking in agreement with ICANN Formal public consultations –business, intellectual property holders (Aug/01) –civil liberties, other ngos (Nov/01) –international input (Nov/01) Informal public consultations –RIPE 40 (Oct/01) –NANOG 23 (Oct/01) –RIPE 41 (Jan/02) –NANOG 24 (Feb/02) –APRICOT 2002 (Mar/02) –APNIC 13 (Mar/02)

Mar Community at a Glance If we tried to include every aspect of every type of whois service (past or present) in the world, we would never get any work completed. The scope would be too large. The subset is the community of people that administer the Internet: –Network operators and service providers –Registry operators –Implementers of software (for this community) –Registrars, Certificate Authorities, etc. –IPR Holders, Law Enforcement, other government agencies, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), etc…

Mar So is Harmony Communal? Not always –Laws applying to various network and registry operators vary from country to country. –Some policies may conflict with laws elsewhere. –Registry operators dont always see eye-to-eye. –Registrars dont always see eye-to-eye. –… the list goes on… We must provide the mechanism, not the policy. –Because it is not our job. –And we would never finish if we did.

Mar Some of the Potential Requirements Structured queries and results Referrals and referral-path authority NIC Handle references Standards Ease of implementation and minimal re-invention Machine readability Decentralization and one-stop-shopping. Privacy and access by IPR holders and law enforcement. Adaptable to many policies and laws. After 30+ years of Internet Science, it can be done.

Mar Discussion When we list out some of the requirements, they cause us to ask more questions? Your input is needed.

Mar Structured Queries & Results Only routing has a standard – RPSL. What should domain registries use? What will they be willing to use? –PROVREG is moving forward with XML. If another schema language (for example XML), what should happen to RPSL? –Would it get XML-ized (components broken into XML elements)? –There is precedence in XML for use of other grammars. –XML Digital Signatures can use X.509 certs as-is. –W3C even defined parts of Xpath with a non-XML grammar. Queries vary from server to server, especially for the domain registries. –Solved by common schema language and standard schemas. On settling on a set of standard schema data models: –Which current ones work well? –What needs to be added?

Mar A Unified Protocol/Service The registry operators are starting to drift apart. –At least two TLD operators flirting with LDAP. –There is nothing like RPSL for domains. –What about Rwhois? –ICANN registrars being told to use XML for escrow. Is it time to address this problem? Or should the naming registries and address and routing registries be allowed to drift apart in how they deliver their whois service?

Mar Needs of Network Operators The most consistent end-users of all 3 registry types in terms of frequency and depth of need. If their needs arent met, then the Internet doesnt run. If their needs arent met, the needs of the other end- users wont matter. –Disagreement? Requirements of the whois service: –Machine consumable? –Easy to find tools to work with these services? –Easier referencing of objects from one service to another? –One-stop-shopping - a centralized view of a decentralized system?

Mar Burdens on Network Operators What changes or new features to whois can be done to help with requests from IPR holders and law enforcement? Is there anything the whois services of the registries can do to ease other burdens? How will privacy restrictions impact work? How should handles be handled?

Mar Implementation What types of client tools are needed by network operators? Is there a desire for a set of client tools that are open source reference implementations? What is the comfort level in the community with taking open source tools and adapting them to meet specific needs?

Mar Conclusion Your comments, opinions, and ideas are welcome. – Further reading: –Requirements: –draft-newton-ir-dir-requirements-00.txt –LDAP proposals: –draft-newton-ldap-whois-00.txt –draft-hall-ldap-whois-00.txt –XML proposal: –draft-newton-xdap-01.txt –draft-newton-xdap-domdir-01.txt –draft-newton-xdap-ipdir-01.txt –The State of Whois: –draft-campbell-whois-00.txt –draft-brunner-rfc954-historic-00.txt Tentative Action –Cross-Registry Information Service Protocol (CRISP) BoF proposed for IETF 53