Protocol Action: Architecture of the Whois++ Index Service to Proposed Standard

[The IESG <[e-mail]>]

The IESG has approved the following two Internet-Drafts as Proposed
Standards:

  1. Architecture of the Whois++  Index Service
	<draft-ietf-wnils-whois-07.txt>
  2. How to interact with a Whois++ mesh
	<draft-ietf-wnils-whois-mesh-03.txt>


  These documents are the product of the Whois and Network Information
  Lookup Service Working Group. The IESG contact persons are Harald
  Alvestrand, John Klensin, and Joyce K. Reynolds.


Technical Summary

 These two documents, together with the already published RFCs 1834 and
 1835, form the complete WHOIS++ protocol specification.  whois-07.txt
 gives the index protocol that is used to interchange data between
 whois++ servers so that the illusion of a global directory can be
 maintained.  whois-mesh-03.txt gives the guidance a client needs to
 navigate this mesh efficiently and with a consistent service to the
 user.

Working Group Summary

 The working group has recommended publication of this document.
 No issues were identified during Last Call.

Protocol Quality

 The protocol was reviewed for the IESG by Harald T. Alvestrand

 The indexing protocol has some limitations; the intention is that this
 protocol will be obsoleted by the output of the FIND WG.  The
 specifications seem, however, to be self-consistent and unambiguous
 enough to allow reasonably independent implementation.

 There are implementations, with the DIGGER service by Bunyip being the
 primary one used in practice.