Subject: RE: IDUP-GSS-API...

From: Carlisle Adams <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 2 Dec 1997 16:01:27 -0500

Hi John,

>----------
>From: 	Linn, John[SMTP:[email-masked]]
>Sent: 	Tuesday, December 02, 1997 3:57 PM
>To: 	Carlisle Adams; 'CAT-WG List'; Linn, John
>Subject: 	RE: IDUP-GSS-API...
>
>Carlisle wrote, excerpting: 
>
>> There is perhaps one final issue that should be debated (over the list
>> or at the meeting or both).  Someone sent mail to me privately saying
>> that tokens without the GSS-style "framing" were a bad idea because this
>> breaks the interoperability of independent IDUP implementations [note
>> that IDUP currently says that the framing is optional (decided by the
>> mechanism spec.)].  This was discussed at a CAT meeting some time ago.
>> The problem is that if someone decides to do an {S/MIME / OpenPGP /
>> whatever} mechanism under IDUP, they probably don't want the framing
>> because then they lose interoperability with all the non-IDUP
>> implementations of that mechanism in the world.  On the other hand,
>> without the framing, an IDUP_Get_token_details call cannot expect to
>> return anything useful.
>> 
>The tradeoff in the GSS case favored tags in order to demultiplexing
>among multiple mechanisms; interoperability between GSS-based and
>non-GSS peers implementing a common mechanism hadn't been anticipated.
>If, in the IDUP environment, unframed tokens are sufficient to enable
>interoperability with existing non-IDUP protocol implementations, this
>might motivate a different conclusion.  If unframed tokens are admitted,
>would it be feasible and useful for a caller to be able to pass an
>optional input OID to IDUP_Get_token_details, to designate the mechanism
>against which an unframed token would be interpreted?  

I think this is a very reasonable idea and would be willing to put it
in.

Anyone have any objections?

--------------------------------------------
Carlisle Adams
Entrust Technologies
[email-masked]
--------------------------------------------