Re: A philosophical question about large directory structures

Mark,

See below.

At 14:55 99/06/24 -0400, Mark Smith wrote:
>Erik Skovgaard wrote:
>> 
>> Tim,
>> 
>> If you do not somehow guess the upper levels of a DIT, you would always
>> have initiate large searches before finding the subtree you are looking
for.
>> 
>> Right now you can pretty much assume that most commercial entities will be
>> under the .com domain, but what happens when we have many other TLDs?  Is
>> every single client going to maintain a list of all the second level
>> domains?  Even if they did (which would require a client with lots of
>> memory), I would still find host names that may not look like a company
>> name at all.
>
>I don't think there is any hope of a guessing approach or a "search
>everything across many servers" approach to work.  A "directory or

But we are talking about limiting the search here.  If the DIT is divided
into countries, we at least have a good start.

>directories" will be needed, which is what I thought CIP was all about. 
>To find someone you need to do both of these steps:
>
>1) Locate the directory service or services that might have information
>about the person.
>
>2) Search the services (by contacting organization-specific servers or
>similar) and retrieve information about the person you are seeking.
>

As you point out below, who is going to set up the key DSA?  Using my
proposal you simply pass the buck to each country and it is up to them to
establish an infrastructure that works.  Of course, that may be a problem
in the US :-)

>LDAP is sufficient for 2) but not for 1) by itself.  Actually, the
>problem is not with LDAP but, as many others here have pointed out, it
>is with registering directory services and building a global service. 
>There is no incentive for anyone to do it... and not enough incentive
>for everyone to play nice together to build it.

Exactly!  That has always been our problem.  However, with PKI as the
incentive many countries are actually setting up a name registration
authority.

>
> 
>> ...
>> Some companies are lucky enough to have "good" domain names (such as
>> Netscape), but many will not.  I would rather see the Directory as an aid
>> to finding the hostname than using an artificial and at times misleading
name.
>> 
>> We are talking about a Directory infrastructure that should be able to
>> scale significantly.  I shudder just thinking of the large number searches
>> that would be required if the .com domain were divided up among thousands
>> of DSAs.  Who would maintain the knowledge references?
>> 
>> I would argue that the .com name space is simply too flat.
>
>I doubt it... how many .com domains are there today?  Also, the

I do not have the number, but certainly a few orders of magnitude more than
there are countries.

>"directory of directories" approach nicely separates the naming problem
>(I say use dc naming but use whatever you like) from the directory
>service location problem.  Tying these two problems together too tightly
>is a hopeless approach.  It hasn't worked so far.

It seems to me that you are trying to tie the naming schema and the server
location together.  I want them separated so I can ensure user-friendly
Directory names.

A "directory of directories" would be nice, but the practical problem of
agreeing on who should run it and in which country it should live is a
recipe for disaster.

Cheers,                    ....Erik.

------------------------------------------
Erik Skovgaard
GeoTrain Corp.
Enterprise Directory Planning
http://www.geotrain.com

>
>-- 
>Mark Smith
>Directory Architect / Sun-Netscape Alliance
>My words are my own, not my employer's.  Got LDAP?
>
>