Name: RESTful Provisioning Protocol (RPP)

Description

The Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP) was standardized (STD 69) over 20 years ago to address the needs of domain name management between domain name registries and registrars. EPP has served the domain name industry well, but despite its extensibility features it is not compatible with modern software development and infrastructure services that have been developed in the intervening years.

On the side of ccTLDs, there is a desire to create a new domain name provisioning protocol based on state-of-the-art RESTful principles and corresponding data representations using JSON instead of XML. This new protocol will specifically target current software development methodologies as well as scalable infrastructure as is commonly found in cloud and on-premises stateless, serverless, containerized and virtual application clustering technologies.

This evolution already started in the ccTLD space and the first production deployments of this approach (Afnic, .fr, Estonian Internet Foundation, .ee) have proven very good adoption by both existing clients as well as a preferred way of integration for new registrars.

The use of RESTful principles allows for easier integration with registry functions, enabling smaller registrars to also leverage the automated provisioning channel.
Other large European ccTLD registries (DENIC, .de , SIDN, .nl) already outlined plans of going into the same direction in the near future. The risk of returning to a pre-EPP situation, where multiple incompatible provisioning protocols existed, shall be counteracted with the work of this working group.

A provisioning protocol based on modern technologies will also lower the bar for new entrants with compatible provisioning use cases not yet covered by EPP, where usage of EPP would bear higher implementation cost and operational difficulties.

After careful consideration by the REGEXT working group, there is a rough consensus that this new approach would not fulfill all the requirements described in RFC5730 for extensions of the EPP protocol and that a new working group would better fulfill the purpose of this work. The new work shall however consider the best possible compatibility with EPP and define a clear path for efficiently operating EPP alongside the new RESTful protocol and migration to the new protocol.

Mailing list references:
https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/regext/8sC8oXHSqyBK3IwF4DF-rHHcOMM/
https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/regext/jZDzFI0RsVn2FOjAJvem4dp0QQ4/
https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/regext/En9ZIBzixopUTyqTA6wlP6O0ccc/

Required Details

• Status: WG-forming
• Responsible AD: Orie Steele
• BOF proponents
• Pawel Kowalik (kowalik@denic.de)
• Marco Davids (marco.davids@sidn.nl)
• Andy Newton (andy@hxr.us)
• Maarten Wullink (maarten.wullink@sidn.nl)
• BOF chairs: Andy Newton, Maarten Wullink
• Number of people expected to attend: 50
• Length of session: 1 hours
• Conflicts (whole Areas and/or WGs)
• Chair Conflicts: TBD
• Technology Overlap: DNSOP, DPRIVE, ADD, DNSSD, REGEXT
• Key Participant Conflict: REGEXT, DNSOP

Information for IAB/IESG

• protocols or practices that already exist in this space: STD 69 (EPP)
• modifications to existing protocols or practices are required: none
• Which (if any) entirely new protocols or practices are required: RESTful Provisioning Protocol (RPP)
• Open source projects (if any) implementing this work
• API (https://github.com/SIDN/ietf-rpp-api)
• EPP XML to RPP JSON mapping (https://github.com/pawel-kow/epp-xsd-to-json-schema)

Agenda

• Introduction, Note Well, agenda: 5 minutes
• Motivation: 15 minutes
• Drafts: 10 minutes
• Charter discussion: 30 minutes
• Wrap up (AD/Chair)

Links to the mailing list, draft charter if any, relevant Internet-Drafts, etc.

• Mailing List: https://mailman3.ietf.org/mailman3/lists/rpp.ietf.org/
• Draft charter: https://github.com/SIDN/ietf-wg-rpp-charter
• Relevant Internet-Drafts:
• https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-wullink-restful-epp (to be replaced)