Subject: 53rd IETF - Keywords Naming Services BOF (kwns)

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 06 Mar 2002 13:28:04 -0500

Keywords Naming Services BOF (kwns)

Thursday, March 21 at 1300-1500
===================================

CHAIRS: Yves Arrouye <[email-masked]>
        Yang Woo Ko <[email-masked]>

Abstract

This BOF will examine so-called Keywords systems. Keywords systems provide
multilingual, human-friendly, natural language naming systems for Internet
applications. This BOF will use a collection of documents relevant to the
topic, some of which were produced by Keywords systems operators, or
relevant to the topic of Internet navigation, as the starting point for any
subsequent working group or other efforts.

Introduction

There are several diffuse efforts working toward the goal of offering an
internationalized multilingual, human-friendly, naming system for Internet
applications and their users. The two common answers to the problem are
directory services [2, 3] and Keywords systems [4, 14]. Keywords are a layer
above DNS and search systems, but they are not a directory layer or service
(see [3]). The uniqueness requirements of Keywords make them an unambiguous
lookup system. Keywords systems are a focused first step to understand and
solve some of the issues proposed in [2,3] and presented at the irnss BOF at
the 52th IETF meeting.

There are many Keywords systems in existence, or about to be brought into
existence, today. Companies like RealNames Corporation [5], Netpia [6],
Netword [7], AOL [8], CNNIC [9], TWNIC [10], and 3721 [11] are operators of
Keywords systems. All these systems try to solve the same problem. They are
turning to the IETF for their standardization issues.

There is a need to satisfy a common set of requirements for Keywords
systems, in order to enable interoperability between the different Keywords
systems operators through standardization of the resolution and registration
protocols.

In order to understand the difference between Keywords systems and the
proposed directory and search solution, we propose to discuss the following
items as initial requirements that stem from the existing approaches to
Keywords systems:

- A Keyword as a named handle to a resource descriptor that provides
meta-data about a given resource, including its physical address (resource
URI). At stake is the notion that a set of properties, or facets, makes up a
Keyword; whether to standardize these properties for interoperability; and
whether it is desirable or not to provide mechanisms to extend them.

- Keywords can serve the needs of multiple applications and devices. A
Keywords system may support more than one application, device, or service.
Different applications, devices, or services, may require different
properties in the resource descriptor.

- Keywords are unique within the context defined by a well-defined subset of
properties of the resource descriptors. Given a multilingual name and some
context, an application can fetch a resource descriptor and use its
properties, for example to provide direct navigation.

- Keyword namespaces should be organized to provide for local customization
and culturally correct handling of names for a given region. The issues to
be discussed ranged from the geopolitical implications of the choice of the
namespace granularity (e.g. country-based namespaces), to the amount of
latitude that a given namespace can have in the (re)definition of name
equivalence within that namespace, including, for example, handling the
relationship between the Simplified and Traditional forms of Chinese.

- When two Keywords systems operators want to be integrated, they need to
standardize on a resolution protocol, which should be standardized. In
addition, there may or may not be a need for a standardized registration
mechanism for Keywords across different Keywords registry; such
standardization may be based on the PROVREG WG efforts.

- Applications will need to be changed in order to benefit from Keywords or
any new naming system. Because changing applications is a disruptive
operation, there is a strong incentive to design a new protocol that will
enable a resolution system to resolve names and/or addresses from multiple
naming systems through a single common application interface.

- Keywords systems are not directory services or directory layers, but are
an independent layer above DNS. There is a need to describe the relationship
and differentiation between this standard effort and the proposed Internet
Resource Name Search Service (irnss) effort, and the CNRP [13] effort,
should be discussed.

These requirements are presented in [14], a document that reflects the view
of the members of the MINC and IFIK associations, [5, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12].

Proposed Timeline

If an IETF Working Group is created after the BOF is held, we propose the
following timeline for the WG deliveries:

- A requirements document will be produced within 6 months.

- A resolution protocol for Keywords will be defined within 12 months.

- Timelines for other items will be proposed as a result of the BOF, as
these items are determined to be potential WG work items.

BOF Agenda

1. Existing Keywords systems overview. Each of the following systems will be
presented in light of the proposed discussion items. Each presentation will
last 5 minutes.

2. Discussion of the items presented above, including emphasis on
multilingual issues such as TC/SC, which hasn't been successfully resolved
so far.

3. Decision on next steps: working group creation, and if so, timelines
(i.e. when to produce different documents).

References

[1] draft-klensin-dns-role-01.txt

[2] draft-klensin-dns-search-03.txt

[3] draft-mealling-sls-00.txt

[4] draft-arrouye-kls-00.txt

[5] http://www.realnames.com/

[6] http://www.netword.com/

[7] http://www.netpia.com/

[8] http://www.aol.com/

[9] http://www.cnnic.net.cn/

[10] http://twnic.net.tw/

[11] http://www.3721.com/

[12] http://www.ifik.org/

[13] Popp, N., M.  Mealling, L. Masinter, K. Sollins. "Context and Goals for
Common Name Resolution", RFC 2972. October 2000.

[14] Arrouye, Y., and Tan, T.W.. "Keywords Systems - Definition and
Requirements", draft-arrouye-keywords-reqs-00.txt, February 2002.