RE: Minutes from San Diego

Having given this some thought, it sounds like we need two things here
(maybe three)...

1) An ICANN Registrar Whois "data presentation" best practices document
1a) a larger discussion concerning the merits and practicality of extending
this best practices to other related portions of the 'net (ie ccTLD whois
etc)...
2) A discussion concerning the merits of and the possible need for a
different and new protocol v. using the old protocol

I'd be happy to kick in on the drafting of 1 if it is deemed worthwhile. As
far as the other two points go, I've come to the conclusion that this effort
is being driven by the well-intentioned, but misplaced belief that whois:43
is only used for domain related purposes. The commonly held belief is that
it is easy to standardize the data presentation and output and modify the
protocol. Obviously, this is not true.

I'm pretty sure that we can satisfy the needs of the well-intentioned
through a carefully constructed best practices document and kill an urban
myth at the same time...

-rwr


<  -----Original Message-----
<  From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]On Behalf Of
<  Randy Bush
<  Sent: Wednesday, January 17, 2001 10:24 AM
<  To: Paul Hoffman / IMC
<  Cc: [email protected]
<  Subject: Re: Minutes from San Diego
<
<
<  i could not even get into the room.  the minutes say
<
<    whois users RIRs, routing registries, domain registries, registrars
<    #1 and #2 are close #3 is a bit different
<
<  actually, the whois port/protocol is used by all sorts of
<  strange and arcane
<  uses by all sorts of folk.  imiho, we do not have the
<  prerogative to break
<  their uses by a change to the base whois/43 protocol.
<
<  this is not to say that some group of applications of the whois protocol
<  could not agree to use it in a common way, essentially forming an overlay
<  protocol.
<
<  randy