Subject: 51st IETF - Whois Enhancement BOF (whoisfix)

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 01 Aug 2001 11:38:22 -0400

Whois Enhancement BOF (whoisfix)

Thursday, August 09 at 1530-1730
==================================

CHAIR: Eric Brunner-Williams <[email-masked]>

ANNOUNCEMENT
------------
Yet another attempt will be made to create a working group providing
minimal enhancements to the WHOIS (port 43) service.

This BOF will review a proposed charter and a proposed specification
for enhancements. This round of effort will be marked by extremely
narrow focus and extremely tight management to maintain that focus.

The technical goals for the enhancement effort will be to:
        specify a common, structured query format,
        specify a means for server query redirection,
        specify server-server queries, and
        specify standardized whois structured response formats.

Character set and data protection (privacy) issues are included in the query
and response format goals.

PROPOSED CHARTER
----------------
Whois is a public-access query service that provides essential operations
information for locating technical points of contact associated with domains
and networks. Current Whois (rfc954) service suffers from an incomplete core
specification, which may be summarized using familiar notation as:

        C: [::printable::]\r\n
        S: .*\r\n <socket close>

This working group will specify a common, structured query format, a means
for server query redirection, server-server queries, and standardized whois
structured response formats. Unmodified clients will interwork with modified
servers and modified clients must be able to interwork with unmodified servers.
The working group will NOT specify the detail of data to be provided when
using the protocol.

The working group will NOT consider other functional enhancements to the
service. All such considerations are deferred to other efforts, for protocols
using ports other than port 43.

Goals and Milestones:
Sep 01  Initial specification of structured data response format,
        and protocol redirection to an alternate server
Dec 01  Initial specification of structured query format
Jan 02  Revised drafts
Mar 02  Drafts submitted for consideration as Proposed Standard

AGENDA:
----------------
 5 min -- introduction, agenda bashing, scribe pressing
 5 min -- charter bashing
15 min -- RIR state-of-whois overview (requirements)
15 min -- TLD state-of-whois overview (requirements)
15 min -- prior work
------
 5 min -- break
------
 5 min -- requirements document
30 min -- design team: queries & formats
10 min -- testbed(s) and transition(s) document
 5 min -- interactions with other WGs
 5 min -- wrap-up
10 min -- it isn't whois:43 trademark & law enforcement & LDAP
 ------
 2 hours  Total