Re: [apps-discuss] Looking at Webfinger

[James M Snell <[e-mail]>]

One of the key problems with all of this is that it really does not account
for the fundamental use case of WebFinger: discovering which services and
data are available for a given user within a given domain. Google, for
instance, may host the email, but the users blog, calendar, or other
services may have nothing to do with google. In fact, Google may not know
*anything* about domains users and would therefore be generally incapable
of providing useful information. In order for WebFinger to be useful, even
with a DNS based bootstrap, the domain owner is going to have to provide
the information about its users.

If the domain owner wishes to provide webfinger services, but defer that
back to a google hosted service, the domain host should manage
/.well-known/* itself and provide a reasonable http redirect back to the
google hosted service. Then, the domain owner would need to work with
google to ensure that the information served up is useful (even then,
however, it would likely be just as easy for the domain owner to host
everything themselves).

Referring back to my index draft [1].. it could look something like...

 GET /.well-known/index/\
53ae56ef33ccb9550869e58820df36c3b1cc9574712556059a3bfc716b4d9255/\
 calendar
Host: example.org

HTTP/1.1 302 Found
 Location: https://webfinger.google.com/example.org/\
53ae56ef33ccb9550869e58820df36c3b1cc9574712556059a3bfc716b4d9255/\
 calendar

[1] http://www.ietf.org/id/draft-snell-web-index-00.txt

- James

On Wed, Aug 29, 2012 at 10:57 AM, John Bradley <[e-mail]> wrote:

> I am not the best person to represent Google's needs.
>
> However as I understand it Google hosts applications such as email
> documents openID for tens of thousands of domains.
> Google themselves don't control the DNS.
>
> The people using the service generally add some MX records for
> aspmx.l.google.com. and a Cname for mail.example.com to ghs.google.com.
>
> The A record for the bare domain typically points off to some Content
> management site the company uses for their web pages.
>
> I think this is probably typical of Yahoo's mail hosting services and
> others.
>
> The service hosing the email/authentication/openID is not the one that
> controls the web server for company.
>
> Saying the CMS venders will provide WebFinger services doesn't seem all
> that likely, especially in virtual hosting environments.
>
> Getting a typical company to do anything more than enter a cname for
> webfinger.example.org is wildly optimistic.
>
> I am entirely open to Ideas on this.   However the previous solution of
> having every RP check with google first to see if they host the email and
> provide the XRDS seems horribly flawed to me.
>
> I would like to see a workable solution at the discovery layer that
> accommodates how people deploy there sites.
>
> I think Bill suggested at one point using the MX record to find the
> webfinger host.  That has a bunch of problems I would prefer to avoid.
>
> John B.
>
> On 2012-08-29, at 1:36 PM, "Paul E. Jones" <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
> John,****
>
> Well, we need to figure out how to address this.****
>
> Would it be reasonable to redirect requests from
> /.well-known/host-meta.json and /.well-known/host-meta to Google?****
>
> Are there other services or files under /.well-known that Google’s
> customers would not want Google to host?  If they were OK with Google’s
> servers responding to anything , then one could put an A (or CNAME) record
> in place for example.com that points to Google.****
>
> Not being familiar with what Google offers, I’m a bit challenged to
> understand exactly what is and is not possible.****
>
> Paul****
>
>  *From:* John Bradley [mailto:[e-mail]]
> *Sent:* Wednesday, August 29, 2012 10:14 AM
> *To:* Paul E. Jones
> *Cc:* 'George Fletcher'; 'Mark Nottingham'; 'IETF Apps Discuss'
> *Subject:* Re: [apps-discuss] Looking at Webfinger****
> ** **
> There mite be a A record but that typically goes off to some virtual web
> hosting company and not the email service provider.****
> ** **
> I think I have also heard William say this is a problem for Yahoo.****
> ** **
> Google was not able to get people to deploy XRDS for hosted domains.
> They came up with a proprietary extension to openID discovery to make
> hosted google apps domains work with some subset of RP.****
> ** **
> The problem is that the company hosting a small businesses website is
> unlikely to provide the web finger infrastructure and there is no way for
> the email/openID provider to do it without their cooperation.****
> ** **
> Adding a A record rather than a CNAME is generally not a good idea if it
> can be avoided.   In the event of the provider changing an IP address it
> breaks all the customers if they have used A records, but that is separate
> issue.  ****
> ** **
> You can set up webfinger on your web server and manage it.   It just won't
> work for large numbers of people as we have it now.  ****
> ** **
> If webfinger won't work for Google Apps for Domains and other hosted
> services like that then It will significantly impact adoption in my opinion.
> ****
> ** **
> We will also need to work around that for Connect.  We don't want another
> proprietary work around with the security problems that can entail.****
> ** **
> John B.****
> ** **
> On 2012-08-28, at 11:37 PM, "Paul E. Jones" <[e-mail]> wrote:
> ****
>
>
> ****
> John,****
>  ****
> If Google is hosting the domain or any other service provider, wouldn’t
> there still be an A record for the domain (e.g.,packetizer.com)?  I know
> there is for virtually every web hosting company I’ve used.  It seems like
> this might just be one more hosted service Google could provide to its
> customers, no?****
>  ****
> I do not know exactly how this hosted service works, but what’s hosted?  I
> assume it’s just email.  If web, then I see no issue.  If only email, then
> the user just needs to have MX records pointing to Google and an A record
> pointing to whatever service runs the WebFinger service.****
>  ****
> In any case, if they can add a CNAME or MX record, I think we can get them
> to add an A record.  I think it would be far more challenging for SMBs to
> add a host like webfinger.example.com.  That would still require an A
> record and a service provider capable of supporting it.****
>  ****
> Paul****
>  ****
> *From:* John Bradley [mailto:[e-mail]]
> *Sent:* Tuesday, August 28, 2012 3:29 PM
> *To:* Paul E. Jones
> *Cc:* 'George Fletcher'; 'Mark Nottingham'; 'IETF Apps Discuss'
> *Subject:* Re: [apps-discuss] Looking at Webfinger****
>  ****
> There are cases where there are hosted domains (Google etc) that may not
> have a http host for the domain name used in the users email address.  ***
> *
>  ****
> There may be merit to having a webfinger.example.com fallback where the
> client can't reach the .well-known for the primary host.****
>  ****
> I know that some sort of SRV record would be the correct way to do it, but
> in the real world SMB don't enter SRV records even if there DNS provider
> support them.****
> The most you can get them to do is add a CNAME or MX record.****
>  ****
> Supporting these sorts of domains somehow is a important issue.****
>  ****
> John B.****
>  ****
> On 2012-08-28, at 3:17 PM, "Paul E. Jones" <[e-mail]> wrote:*
> ***
>
>
>
> ****
> George,****
>  ****
> I believe it might be useful to introduce those who break your WebFinger
> server to Louisville Slugger. :)****
>  ****
> Your pain is understood, but I do not see a way to avoid it.  We could
> introduce something in DNS, but that would also present challenges.  No
> matter where we “root” the discovery process, there is a potential somebody
> could break it.  It could be rooted somewhere other than the root of the
> domain (e.g., webfinger.example.com), but we either need to decide in
> advance of such a location or introduce a way to discovery the discovery
> resources.****
>  ****
> Do you have a suggestion that would make this less likely to be broken?***
> *
>  ****
> Paul****
>  ****
> *From:* [e-mail] [mailto:apps-
> [e-mail]] *On Behalf Of *George Fletcher
> *Sent:* Tuesday, August 28, 2012 11:09 AM
> *To:* Mark Nottingham
> *Cc:* IETF Apps Discuss
> *Subject:* Re: [apps-discuss] Looking at Webfinger****
>  ****
>
> Way "late to the party" but I can speak from experience that deployment
> can be a real issue in some environments. It's all really straight forward
> in a small company or an environment where the identity team "owns" the
> root domain (e.g. example.com). However, if an entire other group in a
> large organization "owns" the root domain (home page for the site) and the
> identity team then needs to get them to make changes, the deployment
> solution gets brittle pretty quick. I've had our webfinger support broken
> at least twice because the "other" team didn't know that certain configs
> were required:)
>
> Also, installing the "dynamic pluming" can be more problematic is these
> cases. It is possible to get apache rewrite rules or netscaler magic in
> place to make it work, it's just a more brittle deployment architecture.
>
> Thanks,
> George****
> On 7/4/12 6:58 PM, John Panzer wrote:****
>
> Mark -- Of course I was speaking about practical realities of typical web
> server administration and deployment.  In practical terms, adding a new
> mod_rewrite rule or moral equivalent is going to be easier than adding a
> new PHP script that connects to a database.  The latter is just always
> going to be a much higher bar.****
>  ****
> And, something that returns per-user data is generally going to need a
> dynamic service of some kind, unless your site has just a handful of users
> and you don't mind going through a publishing exercise each time you add or
> change a user...****
>  ****
> None of this has anything to do with the interface, just deployment
> realities.  And in reality all of this is going to need a dynamic service
> somewhere for each non-trivial site, this is all just a question of how to
> hook it up.****
>
> ****
> --
> John Panzer / Google
> [e-mail] / abstractioneer.org <http://www.abstractioneer.org/> /
> @jpanzer****
>  ****
>
>  ****
> On Wed, Jul 4, 2012 at 3:36 PM, Mark Nottingham <[e-mail]> wrote:****
>
> On 05/07/2012, at 8:16 AM, John Panzer wrote:
>
> > Just as a historical note.  The envisioned usage of host-meta was
> originally to avoid a specification which mandated a particular dynamic URL
> API at a particular /.well-known endpoint (because it may not be feasible
> to do that across all organizations and deployments).  The host-meta
> document itself would be highly cacheable and so wouldn't incur an
> additional network trip in the common case.
> >
> > Having a 3xx redirect is a reasonable alternative that allows a similar
> escape hatch via something like mod_rewrite, albeit at the cost of needing
> an additional network trip each time.  Since a deployment can always avoid
> the 3xx redirect with additional dynamic plumbing behind the well-known
> endpoint, I don't think that's a horrible thing.
> >
> > An application-level redirect would be almost equivalent to an HTTP
> redirect, but then there are two ways to do the same thing.  If _only_ an
> application-level redirect is allowed, then you have to have at least a
> minimal dynamic service at the well-known endpoint (no more mod_rewrite).
>  But the whole reason for this is to avoid the requirement for a dynamic
> service behind well-known...****
> "dynamic" and "static" are properties of the implementation, not the
> interface. HTTP doesn't require that any particular URL be "dynamic";
> anything can, with the right metadata, be cached (and indeed, I've cached
> many, many things with the wrong metadata, because of silly site operators
> and their ideas about "dynamic").
>
> Now, if people want to target a particular implementation that makes it
> easier to serve a particular style of URL without writing code, fine, but
> let's not confuse things.
>
> E.g., a URL like
>
> http://example.com/.well-known/user/bob
>
> is easy to serve in pretty much any way you like with Apache.
>
> I'm also going to push back on the "it may not be feasible to do that
> across all organizations and deployments" motivation. This is a race to the
> bottom. The trick is to make it accessible enough to get sufficient
> traction to pull everyone along, without pandering to *everyone*'s
> requirements.
>
> Regards,****
>
>
> --
> Mark Nottingham   http://www.mnot.net/
>
>
>
>
> ****
>  ****
>
>
>
>
>
> ****
>
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