Re: Merging RRP and Whois

[Bill Manning <bmanning@ISI.EDU>]

% 3. The RRP and Whois are different from each other.
% ---
% The letters 'a' and 'b' are different from each other.  Should I make
% separate keyboards for each one?  Maybe a different keyboard for each
% character?  It is possible to find differences in any two things.  The
% point is, are they *sufficiently* different to warrant separating
% them.  Uniform treatment makes for a consistent view, and greatly
% reduces information overload.

	I'd say yes, they are different enough to seperate.
	Roughly the whois protcol, in all its varients & extentions is 
	basically a READ-ONLY protocol.
	Roughly, the "provreg" protocol, whatever that is, will be a
	READ/WRITE protocol. 

	One is a frontend for the "great unwashed" to learn about
	what is/can be seen (modulo appropriate credentials)
	while the other is a "back-office" protocol for syncronizing
	data between the cabals.

% The Whois functionality will have to be extended. Entities other than
% domain names will soon have to be registered, and made accessible in a
% Whois-like facility.  The RRP will take considerable effort to
% implement.

	What... again!  NSI extended SRIs whois, RIPE twisted it again
	as did the RA project. At least by that time, we had enough
	sense to move our perversity to another port. Then there is 
	the venerable rWHOIS varient. It will run on both the traditional
	port 43 as well as its own port (thank the PTB!) 

	Tweeking whois is "easy" for two reasons:  Its dirt simple
	and its there... sort of the way DNS used to be :)
	I'd rather not see this WG jump down that rathole. Been there,
	Done that, and still smell bad.

Now, having lambasted the idea of lumping whois into provreg, I've a goofy
idea.  Can PROVREG recommend a scalable solution to the consideration of
NIC-HANDLES? To my knowledge, this has never been addressed properly, at 
least since the days when the IR was split. When we did the RA project, the
thought was to tag the NIC-HANDLE with the registrars "stamp", e.g.

	WM110-NSI
	WM110-RIPE
	WM110-ARIN

but this leads, as friend Bush commented at the RIPE-37 mtg, to inconsistancies
between registration agents. IN a nutshell, do we need globally unique IDs 
to the registering agents?  If so, who administers that ID space?

--bill