Network Working Group                                          A. Newton
Internet-Draft                                            VeriSign, Inc.
Expires: August 30, 2002                                   March 1, 2002


                       Whois Domain Data in LDAP
                       draft-newton-ldap-whois-01

Status of this Memo

   This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with
   all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
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   This Internet-Draft will expire on August 30, 2002.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2002). All Rights Reserved.

Abstract

   Domain registration data has typically been exposed to the general
   public via whois for administrative purposes. This document
   discusses the application of LDAP and well-known LDAP types to make
   available Domain registration data.











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Table of Contents

   1.    Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  3
   1.1   Historical Directory Services for Domain Registration Data .  3
   1.2   Motivations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  3
   2.    Service Description  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
   3.    Registry LDAP Service  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
   3.1   TLD DIT  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
   3.1.1 DIT Structure  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
   3.1.2 Allowed Searches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
   3.1.3 Access Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
   3.2   Name Server DIT  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
   3.2.1 DIT Structure  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
   3.2.2 Allowed Searches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
   3.3   Registrar Referral DIT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
   3.3.1 DIT Structure  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
   4.    Registrar LDAP Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
   4.1   TLD DIT  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
   4.1.1 DIT Structure  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
   4.1.2 Allowed Searches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
   4.1.3 Access Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
   4.2   Name Server and Contact DIT  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
   4.2.1 DIT Structure  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
   4.2.2 Allowed Searches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
   5.    Clients  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
   6.    Lessons Learned  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
   6.1   Intra-Server Referrals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
   6.2   Inter-Server Referrals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
   6.3   Common DIT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
   6.4   Universal Client . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
   6.5   Targeting Searches by Tier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
   7.    IANA Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
   8.    Internationalization Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
   9.    Security Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
         References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
         Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
   A.    Other Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
   B.    Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
         Full Copyright Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23












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1. Introduction

   This document describes the Referral LDAP Service, an experimental
   project launched by VeriSign, Inc., to explore the use of LDAP and
   LDAP-related technologies for use as a directory service of
   administrative domain registration information.

1.1 Historical Directory Services for Domain Registration Data

   The original National Science Foundation contract for the InterNIC
   called for the creation of an X.500 directory service to allow for
   administrative needs of the domain registration data and
   information. Due to problems with implementations of X.500 server
   software, a server based on the whois[1] protocol was temporarily
   erected.

   In 1994, the rwhois[3] protocol was introduced to enhance the whois
   protocol. This directory service never gained wide acceptance for
   use with domain data.

   At present, ICANN requires the operation of whois servers by
   registries and registrars of generic top-level domains.

1.2 Motivations

   With the recent split in functional responsibilities between
   registries and registrars, the constant misuse and data-mining of
   domain registration data, and the difficulties with
   machine-readability of whois output, the creation of the Referral
   LDAP Service had the following motivations:

   o  Use a mechanism native to the directory protocol to refer clients
      from inquiries about specific domains made at a registry to the
      appropriate domain within the appropriate directory service at a
      registrar.

   o  Limit access to domain data based on authentication of the client.

   o  Provide for structured queries and well-defined structured
      results.

   o  Use a directory service technology already in general use.

   Given these general criteria, LDAP[5] was selected as the protocol
   for this directory service. After making this decision, it was also
   decided to restrict the use of LDAP to features most readily
   available in common implementations. Therefore, a goal was set to
   not define any new object classes, syntaxes, or matching rules.



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2. Service Description

   The service is composed of three distinct server types: a registry
   LDAP server, registrar LDAP servers, and registrant LDAP servers.

   The registry LDAP server contains three Directory Information Tree's
   (DIT).

   o  The Top-Level Domain (TLD) DIT's follows the DNS hierarchy for
      domains (i.e. dc=foo,dc=com).

   o  The name server DIT allows a view of the name servers, many of
      which serve multiple domains.

   o  The registrar-referral DIT provides referrals from the registry
      into the respective TLD DIT of the registrars (on a TLD basis).

   The registrar LDAP server contains two types of DIT's.

   o  The TLD DIT follows the DNS hierarchy for domains (i.e.
      dc=foo,dc=com) and parallels the TLD DIT of the registry.

   o  The name server and contact DIT allow a view of the name servers
      and contacts, many of which are associated and serve multiple
      domains.

   There is no specification on the DIT or schema for the registrant
   LDAP server. Referrals from the registrar server to the registrant
   server are provided solely for the purpose of allowing the
   registrant direct control over extra administrative information as
   it relates to a particular domain.

   Access control for this service is merely a demonstration of using
   simple bind DN and password authentication. Should registries and
   registrars uniformly adopt LDAP as a means to disseminate domain
   registration data, standardization of the bind DN's would need to be
   undertaken based on each type of user base.














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3. Registry LDAP Service

3.1 TLD DIT

3.1.1 DIT Structure

   The registry TLD DIT has the following structural hierarchy.

                          TLD (i.e. dc=net)
                                  |
                                  |
               -------------------------------------
               |                                   |
      SLD (i.e. dc=foo,dc=net)           SLD (i.e. dc=bar,dc=net)
               |                                   |
       ---------------------            ---------------------
       |           |       |            |           |       |
   name server     |       |        name server     |       |
   (i.e.           |       |        (i.e.           |       |
   cn=nameserver1, |       |        cn=nameserver1, |       |
   dc=foo,dc=net ) |       |        dc=bar,dc=net ) |       |
                   |       |                        |       |
          name server      |               name server      |
          (i.e.            |               (i.e.            |
          cn=nameserver2,  |               cn=nameserver2,  |
          dc=foo,dc=net )  |               dc=bar,dc=net )  |
                           |                                |
                registrar referral               registrar referral
                (i.e.                            (i.e.
                cn=registrar,                    cn=registrar,
                dc=foo,dc=net )                  dc=bar,dc=net )


   The root of a TLD DIT is an entry of objectclass domain as specified
   by RFC2247[4] and represents a top-level domain.

   The second tier of the DIT represents second-level domains. Each of
   these entries is of objectclass domain as specified by RFC2247[4].
   The description attribute on these entries often contains
   descriptive text giving the name of the registrar through which
   these domains have been registered.

   The third tier contains entries specific to each second-level domain
   for which they fall under. Name server entries are of objectclass
   ipHost as specified by RFC2307[8]. The distinguished names of these
   name server entries are algorithmically calculated where the first
   component is the word "nameserver" concatenated with an index number
   of the name server entry and the remaining components being the
   appropriate domain names. There is no specification relating the


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   value of the name server entry to the index it may be assigned other
   than it is unique and consistent with respect to the client session.
   This tier also contains the referral from the registry to the
   registrar. This referral is a direct referral to the entry in the
   appropriate registrar LDAP server corresponding to the domain name
   which the referral falls beneath in this DIT.

3.1.2 Allowed Searches

   Because of the vast number of entries contained within this DIT,
   only certain types of searches are allowed. Allowing any search
   expressible via LDAP would lead to expensive searches that would be
   far too costly for a publicly available service. The searches
   allowed are as follows.

   o  One-level scoped searches based at the root of the DIT. Substring
      matching is allowed on dc attributes, but the substring must be
      at least be 3 characters in length.

   o  Base search based at the root of the DIT.

   o  Base, one-level, and sub-tree searches based at any second level
      domain name (the second tier) and below.

3.1.3 Access Control

   The registry TLD DIT only has one access control type. When a client
   binds with a DN of "cn=trademark" and password of "attorney", the
   second-level domain entries also take on an objectclass of
   extensibleObject with the added attributes of "createddate" and
   "registrationexpirationdate", which are of type Generalized Time as
   specified by RFC2252[6].

3.2 Name Server DIT

3.2.1 DIT Structure

   The registry name server DIT has the following structural hierarchy.

                         (o=nsiregistry.com)
                                  |
                                  |
               -------------------------------------
               |                  |                |
           name server        name server      name server
         (cn=ns1.foo.net)   (cn=ns.bar.com)  (cn=named.acme.org)


   The root of a name server DIT is an entry of objectclass


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   organization as specified by RFC1617[2]. It has no significance
   other than to serve as the root of the DIT.

   The second tier of this DIT represents name servers. Each of these
   entries is of objectclass ipHost as specified by RFC2307[8].

3.2.2 Allowed Searches

   Because of the vast number of entries contained within this DIT,
   only certain types of searches are allowed. Allowing any search
   expressible via LDAP would lead to expensive searches that would be
   far too costly for a publicly available service. The searches
   allowed are as follows.

   o  One-level and sub-tree scoped searches based at the root of the
      DIT if a filter on the cn attribute is provided.

   o  Base search based at the root of the DIT.

   o  Base, one-level, and sub-tree searches based at any name server
      entry.

3.3 Registrar Referral DIT

3.3.1 DIT Structure

   The registry registrar-referral DIT has the following structural
   hierarchy.

                        (o=tlds)
                           |
                           |
            -------------------------------
            |         |         |         |
           tld       tld       tld       tld
         (dc=net)  (dc=com)  (dc=org)  (dc=edu)
            |         |         |         |
            :         :         |         :
            :         :         |         :
                                |
                   ---------------------------
                   |            |            |
               referral to  referral to  referral to
               registrar 1  registrar 2  registrar n
               dc=org DIT   dc=org DIT   dc=org DIT


   The root of the registrar referral DIT is an entry of objectclass
   organization as specified by RFC1617[2]. It has no significance


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   other than to serve as the root of this DIT.

   The second tier of this DIT represents top-level domains. Each of
   these entries is of objectclass domain as specified by RFC2247[4].

   Underneath each TLD entry, the third tier contains referrals to the
   appropriate TLD DIT of each registrar.












































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4. Registrar LDAP Service

4.1 TLD DIT

4.1.1 DIT Structure

   The registrar TLD DIT's, which is similar to the registry TLD DIT's,
   has the following structural hierarchy.

                          TLD (i.e. dc=net)
                                  |
                                  |
               ------------------------------------------------
               |                                          |   |
      SLD (i.e. dc=foo,dc=net)                            :   :
               |                                          :   :
       ---------------------------------------------
       |                        |                  |
       |                        |                  |
   name server            contact             referral to
   (i.e. cn=nameserver1,  (i.e. cn=contact1,  registrant
   dc=foo,dc=net       )  dc=foo,dc=net    )
       |
       |
   name server contact
   (i.e. cn=contact,
   cn=nameserver1,
   dc=foo,dc=net     )


   The root of a TLD DIT is an entry of objectclass domain as specified
   by RFC2247[4] and represents a top-level domain.

   The second tier of the DIT represents second-level domains. Each of
   these entries is of objectclass domain as specified by RFC2247[4].

   The third tier contains entries specific to each second-level domain
   for which they fall under. The entries at this level are as follows:

   o  Name server entries are of objectclass ipHost as specified by
      RFC2307[8]. The distinguished names of these name server entries
      are algorithmically calculated where the first component is the
      word "nameserver" concatenated with an index number of the name
      server entry and the remaining components being the appropriate
      domain names. There is no specification relating the value of the
      name server entry to the index it may be assigned other than it
      is unique and consistent with respect to the client session.

   o  Contact entries are of objectclass inetOrgPerson as specified by


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      RFC2798[9]. The distinguished names of these contact entries are
      algorithmically calculated where the first component is the word
      "contact" concatenated with an index number of the contact and
      the remaining components being the appropriate domain names.
      There is no specification relating the value of the contact entry
      to the index it may be assigned other than it is unique and
      consistent with respect to the client session. The description
      attribute of the entry contains the role for which a contact is
      related to a domain. These roles are identified as "Admin
      Contact", "Technical Contact", and "Billing Contact", and may
      appear in any order.

   o  Finally, this third tier contains the referral from the registrar
      to the registrant.

   The fourth tier only contains name server contact entries. These
   entries are of objectclass inetOrgPerson as specified by RFC2798[9].

4.1.2 Allowed Searches

   Because of the vast number of entries contained within this DIT,
   only certain types of searches are allowed. Allowing any search
   expressible via LDAP would lead to expensive searches that would be
   far too costly for a publicly available service. The searches
   allowed are as follows.

   o  One-level scoped searches based at the root of the DIT. Substring
      matching is allowed on dc and o attributes, but the substring
      must be at least be 3 characters in length.

   o  Base search based at the root of the DIT.

   o  Base, one-level, and sub-tree searches based at any second level
      domain name (the second tier) and below.

4.1.3 Access Control

   The registrar TLD DIT's have two access control types. When binding
   anonymously, a client only sees dc, o, and c attributes of the
   second-level domain entries. When a client binds with a DN of
   "cn=trademark" and password of "attorney", all of the other
   attributes normally available on entries of objectclass domain are
   visible if they have values. In addition, if a client binds with the
   DN of a contact and password of "password", all attributes for
   second-level domain entries for which the bind DN has a relation are
   visible.





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4.2 Name Server and Contact DIT

4.2.1 DIT Structure

   The registrar name server and contact DIT has the following
   structural hierarchy.

                             (o=nsi.com)
                                  |
                                  |
               --------------------------------------
               |                                    |
            Contacts                           Name Servers
          (ou=contacts)                     (ou=name servers)
               |                                    |
        -----------------                ------------------------
        |             | |                |                    | |
     Contact          : :            Name Server              : :
   (uid=handle)       : :            (cn=handle)              : :
                                         |
                                     Name Server
                                       Contact
                                     (cn=contact1)


   The first tier of the name server and contact DIT is an entry of
   objectclass organization as specified by RFC1617[2].

   The second tier of the DIT contains two entries, each of which is of
   objectclass organizationalUnit as specified by RFC2256[7]. One entry
   represents the part of the DIT containing contacts and the other
   entry represents the part of the DIT containing name servers.

   Entries underneath the contacts organizationalUnit entry are of
   objectclass inetOrgPerson and represent contacts registered with the
   registrar. Their RDN is composed of the uid attribute. The uid
   attribute's value is a unique identifier or handle that is registrar
   assigned.

   Entries underneath the name server organizationalUnit entry are of
   objectclass ipHost and represent name servers registered with the
   registrar. Their RDN is composed of the cn attribute. The cn
   attribute's value is a unique identifier or handle that is registrar
   assigned. Each name server entry may optionally have children
   entries of objectclass inetOrgPerson. These entries represent the
   contacts of the name server they fall beneath.





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4.2.2 Allowed Searches

   Because of the vast number of entries contained within this DIT,
   only certain types of searches are allowed. Allowing any search
   expressible via LDAP would lead to expensive searches that would be
   far too costly for a publicly available service. The searches
   allowed are as follows.

   o  One-level and base searches at the root of the DIT.

   o  Sub-tree searches at the root of the DIT using cn and uid
      attributes as a filter.

   o  Base searches at the either entry of the second tier.

   o  One-level and sub-tree searches at either entry of the second
      tier using cn or uid attributes as a filter.

   o  Base, one-level, and sub-tree searches based at any contact or
      name server entry and below.































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5. Clients

   Early scoping and analysis of this project were based on the use of
   output from command line clients, specifically the "ldapsearch"
   command present with many implementations of LDAP servers. Our
   survey of this tool available from many vendors showed that referral
   chasing was difficult to control or predict, and the behavior
   between these implementations with respect to referral chasing was
   inconsistent.

   Based on the limited nature of the expressive capabilities present
   with just command line tools, searches involving nested queries or
   advanced referral chasing were deemed the domain of clients making
   direct use of LDAP client libraries. Three of these types of clients
   were produced: a web-based client, a cross-platform C-based client,
   and a Java client. No significat deficiencies or problems were found
   with the LDAP client libraries in the construction of these clients,
   and the level of control provided by their programming interfaces
   was adequate to create the necessary searches. Instead, most of the
   problems encountered with these clients were based on usability
   concerns.

   It was found that the web-based client caused a great amount of
   confusion for users not familiar with LDAP or whois with respect to
   the underlying technology and the network model. Thus many users
   believed the web-based client to be the only interface to the data
   and were unaware or confused by the intermediate LDAP protocol. In
   addition, it was difficult to express to users the
   registry-registrar-registrant service model in adequate terms from
   search results where the results could be rendered properly among
   the various common web browsers.

   Both the C and Java based clients were built to be both graphical
   and cross-platform (in the case of the C-based client, the Linux and
   Windows platforms were chosen as targets). The LDAP client libraries
   chosen for both clients proved to be quite capable and offered the
   necessary levels of control for conducting nested queries and
   advanced referral chasing. Expectations at the outset for
   construction of both clients, based on past experience, were that
   the C-based client would not only perform better than the Java
   client but also have a better appearance. In reality, these
   assumptions were incorrect as there was no perceivable difference in
   performance and the look of the Java client was often considered to
   be far superior to its counter-part. In addition, the Java client
   required much less time to create. Both clients are available under
   the terms of an open source license. Though it is impossible to have
   accurate measurements of their popularity, through monitoring and
   feedback it was perceived that the web-based client had far greater
   use.


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6. Lessons Learned

   Based on the experience of piloting this experimental service,
   feedback from users of the service, and general comments and
   observations of current and common opinions, the following items
   have been noted.

6.1 Intra-Server Referrals

   Original analysis of the data set to be used revealed a high degree
   of relationships between name servers, contacts, and domains. To
   store the data in non-normalized form according to the DIT outlined
   in this document would make an original relational dataset of
   roughly 20 million objects explode to over 115 million objects.

   To combat this problem, the first pass at defining the DIT's made
   heavy use of referrals between the TLD DIT's and the name server and
   contact DIT's. The use of the 'alias' objectclass was considered but
   ruled out in hopes of using referrals to allow for load balancing
   across servers (i.e. placing each TLD DIT on a separate server, and
   separate servers for the name server and contact DIT's). However,
   initial testing with the 'ldapsearch' command found inconsistencies
   with the interpretation of the referrals and how they were managed.
   Not only were the results inconsistent between implementations, but
   many of these clients would easily get caught in referral loops.

   The final solution to the problem was to create a customized
   back-end data store containing the data in a normalized form. This
   gave the appearance to the client of having a non-normalized data
   set which required no intra-server referrals. Aliases may have been
   a better solution, however our interpretation of their output with
   implementations of the 'ldapsearch' tool was not satisfactory. It
   was also later learned that some LDAP server implementations place
   certain restrictions on aliases that would have conflicted with our
   overall DIT structure. In the end, it was felt that a customized
   back-end would be required by any server with a large data-set, but
   smaller data-sets for less populated domains could easily use
   off-the-shelf implementations.

6.2 Inter-Server Referrals

   The modeling of the overall service to provide for the split in
   operational responsibility between registry and registrar required
   the use of referrals (i.e. the two servers would not be operated by
   the same organization, therefore would most likely not co-exist on
   the same physical machine or network). The chief problem with LDAP
   referrals returned for this purpose grew out of the need to limit
   data returned to the client and the priority given to referrals. It
   was quite easy to cause a sub-tree query at certain levels, for


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   instance a TLD level, to return nothing but referrals. This was true
   because referrals would be returned out of scope of the supplied
   search filter and therefore would fill the result set to its limit,
   normally set to 50 entries.

   In certain use cases, a result set with nothing but referrals was
   desired (e.g. o=tlds). However, even in these cases it was possible
   for some referrals not be returned due to the size limit. In this
   case, it was felt that a result set of 50 referrals, the default for
   the size limit in most cases, was too large for any practical use by
   a client and was a failing of query distribution in general rather
   than a limitation of LDAP.

6.3 Common DIT

   Because of the nature of software development, the graphical and web
   clients were developed after the development of the server software.
   The 'ldapsearch' client was used for testing and development during
   server software creation. It was not until the creation of more
   advanced clients that it was discovered the design decision of
   uniform DIT naming should have been made. Technically, this would
   have allowed for slightly better software modularization and re-use.
   In addition, the use of a company name in the DIT structure did not
   allow for the easy integration of another domain registry, as in the
   registry-registrar model. Not only would clients have to be
   reconfigured for each new registry operator, but this would most
   likely have social implications as well.

6.4 Universal Client

   The construction of the clients revealed yet another misconception.
   Though this project used a generic directory service technology, the
   clients required a high-degree of algorithmic knowledge about the
   DIT structure and schemas being used. The graphical clients could
   not be used against an LDAP service with another DIT or schema.
   Therefore a generic or universal client, one that could be used for
   all LDAP applications, would either not be able to make full use of
   the data provided by the service or would be far too complex to
   operate by the average user.

6.5 Targeting Searches by Tier

   The network model for this service was divided up into three tiers:
   registry, registrar, and registrant. Despite this, all searches
   needed to start at the registry level causing overhead for searches
   that could be targeted at a select tier. While this service did not
   implement a solution to this problem, one has been proposed in
   draft-hall-ldap-whois-00.txt. To paraphrase, the proposal uses SRV
   records in DNS to allow a client to find a responsible LDAP server.


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   Depending on the needs of the search, the client finds the various
   tiers via DNS lookups. Query processing rules are defined for
   traversing the DNS tree and accounting for tiers without SRV
   records. While technically a DNS lookup also causes a search to
   start at a root, the DNS lookups are much faster and the DNS tree is
   federated.













































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7. IANA Considerations

   There are no IANA considerations beyond those need by LDAP[5].
















































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8. Internationalization Considerations

   There are no internationalization considerations beyond those needed
   by LDAP[5].















































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9. Security Considerations

   There are no security considerations beyond those need by LDAP[5].
















































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References

   [1]  Harrenstien, K., Stahl, M. and E. Feinler, "NICNAME/WHOIS", RFC
        954, October 1985.

   [2]  Barker, P., Kille, S. and T. Lenggenhager, "Naming and
        Structuring Guidelines for X.500 Directory Pilots", RFC 1617,
        May 1994.

   [3]  Williamson, S., Kosters, M., Blacka, D., Singh, J. and K.
        Zeilstra, "Referral Whois (RWhois) Protocol V1.5", RFC 2167,
        June 1997.

   [4]  Kille, S., Wahl, M., Grimstad, A., Huber, R. and S. Sataluri,
        "Using Domains in LDAP/X.500 Distinguished Names", RFC 2247,
        January 1998.

   [5]  Wahl, M., Howes, T. and S. Kille, "Lightweight Directory Access
        Protocol (v3)", RFC 2251, December 1997.

   [6]  Wahl, M., Coulbeck, A., Howes, T. and S. Kille, "Lightweight
        Directory Access Protocol (v3): Attribute Syntax Definitions",
        RFC 2252, December 1997.

   [7]  Wahl, M., "A Summary of the X.500(96) User Schema for use with
        LDAPv3", RFC 2256, December 1997.

   [8]  Howard, L., "An Approach for Using LDAP as a Network
        Information Service", RFC 2307, March 1998.

   [9]  Smith, M., "Definition of the inetOrgPerson LDAP Object Class",
        RFC 2798, April 2000.


Author's Address

   Andrew Newton
   VeriSign, Inc.
   21345 Ridgetop Circle
   Sterling, VA  20166
   USA

   Phone: +1 703 948 3382
   EMail: anewton@verisignlabs.com
   URI:   http://www.verisignlabs.com/






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Appendix A. Other Work

   In addition to the deployment of servers and development of clients,
   VeriSign conducted two sub-projects related to this experiment.

   The first project was a whois-to-LDAP gateway. The goal of the
   project was to create an LDAP server for use by registrars to deploy
   in front of their whois servers. This gateway would take LDAP
   requests, translate them to whois requests, issue the request to a
   specific whois server deployed on port 43, interpret the response,
   and return LDAP result sets. Because of the unspecified nature of
   whois result sets, the gateway was programmed specifically to
   recognize only the output of three distinct registrars. While this
   gateway proved valuable enough to allow domain lookups and limited
   searches, it was unable to provide consistent contact lookups,
   nameserver lookups, or registrant referrals. This software was also
   made publicly available under the terms of an open source license.

   The second project was an informal survey of registrants with
   deployed LDAP servers. This was conducted by using the com, net,
   org, and edu zone files and testing for the existence of an LDAP
   server on port 389 using the name of the domain, a host named "ldap"
   in the domain, and a host named "dir" in the domain (i.e. "foo.com",
   "ldap.foo.com", and "dir.foo.com"). This survey did not attempt to
   resolve LDAP services using SRV records in DNS. The result of this
   survey found that roughly 0.5% of active domains had an LDAP server.
   Using informal and unproven methods such as profiling of a server's
   root DSE, the survey found that about 90% of the servers were
   implementations provided by one leading vendor, 9% of the servers
   were implementations provided by a second leading vendor, and 1% of
   the servers were implementations provided by other vendors. Of the
   servers queried that were determined to be implementations provided
   by the top leading vendor, it appeared that about only 10% contained
   public data (this also led to the assumption that the other 90% were
   not intended to be publicly queried). Of the servers queried that
   were determined to be implementations provided by the second leading
   vendor, it appears that nearly all contained public data. Again, it
   should be noted that this was an informal survey.













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Appendix B. Acknowledgements

   Significant analysis, design, and implementation for this project
   were conducted by Brad McMillen, David Blacka, Anna Zhang, and
   Michael Schiraldi. Guidance and review of this project, the
   project's goals, and this document have been given by Mark Kosters
   and Leslie Daigle.












































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Full Copyright Statement

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Acknowledgement

   Funding for the RFC editor function is currently provided by the
   Internet Society.



















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