Subject: [weirds] Port 43 WHOIS proxy

From: Ernie Dainow <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2013 14:28:10 -0500

Hi Ning,

I have a few comments on the presentation at the WIERDS session
http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/88/slides/slides-88-weirds-0.pdf

Basically, I think what would be expected from a proxy service is that all
the current Whois input and output remains the same. This provides
compatibility for all kinds of users of the current Whois, whether it be
humans or scripts.

In other words, you just replace the Whois server on port 43 with a
front-end proxy that accepts current Whois requests, queries an RDAP server
and formats the results into a response that matches the current Whois
server. This should all be transparent to the client.

So to answer some of the questions raised:

Do we need to standardize new query parameters?
- No. Only support the exact Whois queries in use today.

Do we need to standardize the way to translate the JSON into plain text
format?
Do we need to define a new response format for Port 43 Whois clients?
- No. Response format is somewhat different for each Whois server, and
needs to conform to the ICANN contract that defines the Whois response for
each tld in great detail. So for an open source Whois proxy to be useful,
you would need to provide an easy way for users to configure mappings
between RDAP response tags and Whois labels.
For example, Whois for a .com domain has
Creation Date: 2005-07-28
But .org has
Created On:30-May-1996 04:00:00 UTC
So both the label and the format of the data is different.

In addition, some registries may provide Whois data that is not
standardized in RDAP. So hooks need to be provided in open source to make
it easy for providers to add info that will not come back from an RDAP
query.

Should we consider providing the authentication function to Port 43 Whois
clients?
- Not necessary. Current Whois is public information only.

Should we consider providing the Redirect function to Port 43 Whois clients?
- Not necessary. Linux Whois clients contain built in redirection based on
the well known tlds. If the provider keeps the same server name for the
RDAP proxy that they previously used for their Whois server, redirection
will be handled by Linux Whois, to the extend that it is handled today.

Should we consider providing the Search function to Port 43 Whois clients?
- Yes. Several Whois servers support search. They each use slightly
different search patterns. This would need to be configurable, or hooks
provided to allow different service providers to support the same search as
their Whois server.

Should WEIRDS WG consider providing RDAP backward compatibility functions?
- No. I think all the above can be done for an open source client without
any RDAP spec changes.

-Ernie

---

From: "John Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 12 Nov 2013 21:04:09 -0000

>server. This should all be transparent to the client.

Quite right.

For the existing gTLDs, the WHOIS request and result formats are
defined in the ICANN registry agreements.  Once you've done those I
don't think any of the other TLDs need anything very different.

---

From: "Linlin Zhou" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 14:54:35 +0800

Hi Ernie,

I agree with most of what you said according to our discussion in the IETF
meeting.  However, I'm still thinking about the requirements of
"configurable mappings" and "configurable search". Do we really need these
in port 43 proxy?

Regards,

Linlin

From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of
Ernie Dainow
Sent: Wednesday, November 13, 2013 3:28 AM
To: Ning Kong
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: [weirds] Port 43 WHOIS proxy

Hi Ning,

- No. Response format is somewhat different for each Whois server, and needs
to conform to the ICANN contract that defines the Whois response for each
tld in great detail. So for an open source Whois proxy to be useful, you
would need to provide an easy way for users to configure mappings between
RDAP response tags and Whois labels.

But .org has

In addition, some registries may provide Whois data that is not standardized
in RDAP. So hooks need to be provided in open source to make it easy for
providers to add info that will not come back from an RDAP query.

- Not necessary. Linux Whois clients contain built in redirection based on
the well known tlds. If the provider keeps the same server name for the RDAP
proxy that they previously used for their Whois server, redirection will be
handled by Linux Whois, to the extend that it is handled today.

-Ernie

---

From: "Linlin Zhou" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Nov 2013 15:13:09 +0800

Hi Ernie,

From: Ernie Dainow [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: Thursday, November 14, 2013 12:20 AM
To: Linlin Zhou
Subject: Re: [weirds] Port 43 WHOIS proxy

If you are building the code primarily to support new gTLDs and you don't
think the Whois requirements will change, then I suppose you could just
follow SPECIFICATION 4,
http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/agb/agreement-approved-02jul13-en.pd
f

Well, I think this is the primary scenario we planned to implement RDAP.

Other TLDs will have to change your code to use the Whois labels and data
formats that are in their contracts with ICANN. If you make this part of the
code and the search patterns easy to change, then it could still be useful
to TLDs that don't conform to the Whois gTLD requirements.

That's make sense. Thank you for your suggestion. We'll review this
requirement in near future.

Regards,

Linlin