Contact Client ID Namespace Management

[Robert Burbidge <robert.burbidge@poptel.coop>]

Sources :
draft-ietf-provreg-epp-06.txt
draft-ietf-provreg-epp-contact-04.txt

According to the contacts specification, page 17:

  ...  
  A <contact:id> element that contains the desired server-unique
  identifier for the contact to be created.
  ...

<contact:id> values are server(registry)-unique but
client(registrar)-created. It would seem reasonable to partition the
possible values of <contact:id> among the various contacts so as to reduce
the possibility of name collisions on creation of new contacts. This would
be a matter of server policy. One possible scheme would be to allocate a 4
character prefix to each registrar, and allow the registrar to allocate
their own 12-character suffix. Doing so would allow each registrar to manage
a subset of the complete namespace without too much overhead.

If we adopt this scheme, or a similar one, there's nothing in EPP itself to
prevent one client using identifiers from another client's subset of the
contact:id values. Would it be reasonable for a server to maintain allowed
prefixes each client, and validate incoming <contact:create> commands to
ensure that <contact:id> fields match allowed values? Again this would be a
matter of service policy?

Any thoughts on the above would be appreciated.

Rob Burbidge