Re: Meeting straw poll

[Patrick <patrick@gandi.net>]

Dear all,

My answer is quite similar to the previous one of Mr Sheer, but here
it goes anyway.

On Thu, Aug 09, 2001 at 10:57:51AM -0400, Edward Lewis took time to write:
> Towards the end of the meeting at the 51st IETF there was a straw poll
> held.  I wanted to allow those not present to voice responses.
> 
> First, I asked for a show of hands of implementors.  Not that this is a
> decision point, if you are building an implementation and don't mind doing
> so, please mention this to the chairs - not that we are going to do
> anything with the data.

In fact, I am the person implementing Registry clients at Gandi
(Registrar). We are building something close to DBI/DBD in Perl to be
able to support as many Registries and protocols as possible. It is a
work in progress, and may be available later as free software.

Right now in fact I'm building Perl EPP modules (near finished).

So, you can count me as implementor.

> 1) Are you "loyal" to EPP?
> 2) Are you "loyal" to XRP?
> 3) Do you want just one to be defined?  IOW, you'll be dealing with so many
> folks, you can't afford to have two dissimilar systems.
> 
> I don't want to know if EPP is better or worse than XRP.  I just want to
> gauge what the group needs to settle upon.

As far as I have seen since now from the drafts, XRP is kind of EPP
over BEEP. Seems to me more complicated. If it solves problems not
solved by EPP, then ok. Otherwise I always prefer the simpler
solutions.

For me, as far as I've seen, BEEP is exactly like TCP (with windows,
ack for each frame/packet, etc...) but on a different layer. I am
still not sure that this is really something useful, seems to be like
an ``application TCP'' over TCP.

I have not deeply studied things so it is just my point of view, and
I do not want to offense anyone.

> BTW, the largest bloc of hands was for #3 during the meeting.
> 
> This poll is not intended to kill off ERP and/or XRP, but rather to
> determine if we need to hammer the two into one - as opposed to being
> parallel.

It is ok to me to have EPP and XRP one along the other, if both are
doing things the other can not. If both are doing the same thing, then
they should be merged IMNSHO.

In any case our software framework is build to be able to support as
many as possible. And we will need to since Afilias seems to use EPP
and Neulevel XRP. But if complexity can be reduced, we are all for
it.

Regards,
Patrick Mevzek