CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_ Reported by Stan Borinski/InterNIC Minutes of the RWhois Operational Development Working Group (RWHOIS) Agenda o Review minutes of last meeting o Status of RWhois (client, server, tools) o Proposed changes to specification o RWhois PGP interaction o Required attribute definitions o Operational concerns o Primary/secondary interaction o CIX proposal Discussion Mark Kosters started the session with a review of the minutes from the last meeting in Danvers. The first issue was reducing the complexity of the server with display types being moved to the client. The second was to define secondary requirements: at least two secondaries, one to be parent; SOA should have update in the attribute. The last issue, which raised further discussion, was the dropping of the requirement to be old Whois compatible. The status of the InterNIC's RWhois client and server implementations was then discussed. It was stated that version 1.0b2 of the client was recently released and announced to the mailing list. This version is compatible with RFC 1714 -- RWhois specification version 1.0 -- and it has integrated edit capabilities and a pullup feature. Mark mentioned that a new version of the server should be released soon after the IETF. He is currently fixing portability problems with Stan Barber. It was asked which operating systems were currently supported, and Mark reported that both SunOS and BSDI are supported now, with Solaris and AIX compatibility currently being tested. Mark also mentioned that Scott Williamson was working on a Windows implementation. It was mentioned that an independent implementation by the CIX is currently under review. It was decided that Mark should wait to release the new version of the server until secondary server capability is built-in. The new version is currently compatible with version 1.0 and has edit features built-in. There were several proposed changes to the specification, the first being the private directive to bind a user to a particular record. Other proposed specification changes included adding the last update in the SOA, and having compatibility numbers for specific directives and responses. When RWhois-PGP interaction was discussed, Randy Bush suggested that a more appropriate encryption protocol would be Kerberos, based on its being a session-based security protocol. It was also pointed out that its key management is better than PGP's and is available internationally. When additional authentication alternatives were discussed, SSL and the CAT Working Group efforts were mentioned. Bill Manning suggested that the GSS API should be investigated. The next item of discussion was the use of RIPE attributes whenever possible. Mark raised the question of whether the network object had an AS field yet and found that it did. Wilfried Woeber mentioned that the organization object had been kept separate from the main record, at which point Randy Bush stated that the deeper question was whether a user or an organization should be used as the contact for any particular record. It was decided that both could co-exist for now. Stan Borinski presented on primary-secondary interaction. There are currently four cases in which the primary and the secondary interact: o Registration which starts with the secondary issuing the inssec directive, and the xfer directive to transfer all the primary's data o De-registration which requires a simple delsec directive o Compile update which involves the xfer directive and the transfer of all primary's data o Partial update which utilizes the notify update directive to send partial updates of the primary's data Operationals concerns, based on the AP-NIC's experience, were reported by David Conrad. David observed that most providers, when given a choice between running an RWhois server and providing updates to the central registry, choose to set up an RWhois server. However, after several months, most had failed to set up their server, and of those that did, most had not properly maintained the data. The conclusion was that a document was needed that made the server administrator more responsible. Randy Bush pointed out that, as was discussed in the RPS Working Group, users needed a carrot to start using RWhois heavily. Bill Manning suggested looking at Charley Kline's VLSM tool. The RPing tool was also suggested Paul Vixie presented the CIX's implementation plans -- with the inclusion of RWhois in their Registry Toolset -- although still in the review process. He stated that the RWhois protocol might be changed to utilize the SRV record in DNS, since the current implementation uses the concepts of DNS, without using DNS itself. Thus, the authoritative server could be found using DNS. It was suggested that a model closer to the SONAR demonstration be used -- which also finds the server closer to the user. Action Items Mark Kosters will release version 1.0Beta as soon as it becomes relatively stable.