Re: [apps-discuss] draft-ietf-weirds-bootstrap-00 and our lawn -- feedback?

[Darrel Miller <[e-mail]>]

 John,

Wow, that sucks for you guys.  I'm glad I don't have to spend time
writing specs that people are going choose to ignore at their own
convenience.

I wish you the best of luck.

Darrel

On Sun, Feb 16, 2014 at 1:58 PM, John R Levine <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>> People keep saying this.  My client is a three line shell script that
>>> uses wget and grep (really.)  Could you explain how that works with
>>> templates?
>
>
> We seem to be talking past each other here.
>
> I believe that there are web servers that for reasons of bureacracy are run
> in ways with weird limitations, and it would be nice for them if http
> clients would do arbitrarily complex stuff to work around those servers'
> limitations.  Although it's hard to imagine why a domain or IP registry
> would use a server like that (none do now), it's not hard to imagine ISPs
> delegating the RDAP for an IPv6 /56 or /60 to a a SOHO router that's routing
> the IP traffic, where RDAP will share the tiny http server with the one for
> the config panel.
>
> But there are also web clients that are rather constrained for both
> administrative and technical reasons, and "use templates" is not helpful
> advice.  (See unanswered question above.)
>
> I also think I understand why it is not a good idea to invent random fixed
> URL syntax that people might shove into random places in a web server, but
> that's not what RDAP is proposing.  Each RDAP server picks its own arbitrary
> URL prefix which the bootstrap or upstream servers know about, and the RDAP
> stuff is all constrained to be under that prefix, not anywhere else in the
> name space. It's true, the syntax requires that some stuff be in the path
> and some as queries, but so be it.
>
> As firmly as one side can say get better clients that can handle arbitrary
> templates, the other side can say get better servers that can handle the
> syntax that everyone uses.  Since there will be way more clients than
> servers, fixing the servers will minimize the global pain.
>
> Having been through this kind of stuff before,* if RDAP is forced to stick
> in templates to get through the IESG, here's what will happen: a few clients
> that already have template libraries will use them.  Everyone else will see
> that the largest domain and IP registries use the syntax in the draft (their
> prototypes do now), and the small registries and subregistries will use the
> free python server commissioned by ICANN, which also uses the same syntax,
> so in practice you can skip the templates and it'll work.
>
> A few registries or LIRs might take the spec at face value and use different
> URL syntax and expect the templates to deal with it. They will get a stream
> of complaints from people who tell them that their clients work fine with
> everyone else, you're broken, don't waste our time playing RFC lawyer.  So
> they'll eventually give up and stick in a rewriting proxy to match the
> defacto standard syntax, or for registries who are stubborn, helpful
> entrepreneurs will run proxies on their behalf which translate the queries,
> and also snoop on the query stream.  There are plenty of web WHOIS sites
> right now now that conveniently find the right WHOIS server for you and sell
> the queries to domain speculators, so this isn't a stretch at all.
>
> I hope we agree that would be a ridiculous outcome.  If you want to help us,
> you need to understand RDAP enough to see what has a realistic chance of
> posing a problem in actual deployed implementations, and how to offer advice
> we can realistically follow.
>
> R's,
> John
>
> * - I'm thinking of when SPF was forced to add a new RRTYPE
>
>
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