Re: Merging RRP and Whois

[Sheer El-Showk <sheer@laudanum.saraf.com>]

> > %   1. The ProvReg group designs a protocol.  This protocol allows/assumes:
> > %       * A centralized object repository (registry) is assumed.
> > 
> > 	Why is this assumption in place?
> > 	One could (rightly) argue that the single largest cause of
> > 	instability and scaleability is the insistance on using 
> > 	"A centralized ... repository".  The problems with that 

Well, I wouldn't say this is necassarily true.  DNS is extremely
distributed, both in location and in authority (well ICANN on top, but
at lower levels everyone only sees the servers above them as local
authority, they don't all go straight to the root servers) and that has
not helped make it any more stable (it just means you can have that many
more sources of inaccuracy -- the authoritative domain server, a glue
record in a higher level domain, a none-updated record in a secondary
server).

As for scalability of a centralized repository ... it shouldn't be a
problem.  Centralized doens't mean one server or one network ... it means
one central authority.  They can use as many redundant, load-balancing
servers as they want -- the idea is that there is always one entity to
turn to to get authoritative information regarding a domain or other
registered object.

> > 	tactic caused the original IR to segment into multiple
> > 	regional IRs, each retaining/maintaining "A centralized
> > 	repository". Its gotten worse with the addition of each new
> > 	"routing database" & whois service by agency.  Each presumes
> > 	a single "centralized repository".
> > 
> > 	I'd rather see a protocol to allow a composite, non authoritative
> > 	structure be fabricated from collections of hundreds/thousands 
> > 	of broadly distributed attributes. That way I would own my 
> > 	data and be able to direct its distribution to/through others
> > 	non-auth copies of my data.

This sounds nice in principle, but how do you maintain data consistency,
data-uniqueness, and how do you protect against data corruption.  I'd be
genuinly interested in discussing a system that would allow the data to be
maintain its own integrity in some way and be distributed (eg just an
interesting idea: unique world-wide NIC handle with your region specific
NIC info being held in the ccTLD registries keyed to your unique
identifier with local privilage systems in place -- sounds nice but a
little complicated).

Sheer