rfc2345.txt

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Network Working Group                                        J. Klensin
Request for Comments: 2345                                          MCI
Category: Experimental                                          T. Wolf
                                                       Dun & Bradstreet
                                                             G. Oglesby
                                                                    MCI
                                                               May 1998


                Domain Names and Company Name Retrieval

Status of this Memo

   This memo defines an Experimental Protocol for the Internet
   community.  It does not specify an Internet standard of any kind.
   Discussion and suggestions for improvement are requested.
   Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (1998).  All Rights Reserved.

Abstract

   Location of web information for particular companies based on their
   names has become an increasingly difficult problem as the Internet
   and the web grow.   The use of a naming convention and the domain
   name system (DNS) for that purpose has caused complications for the
   latter while not solving the problem.  While there have been several
   proposals to use contemporary, high-capability, directory service and
   search protocols to reduce the dependencies on DNS conventions, none
   of them have been significantly deployed.

   This document proposes a company name to URL mapping service based on
   the oldest and least complex of Internet directory protocols, whois,
   in order to explore whether an extremely simple and widely-deployed
   protocol can succeed where more complex and powerful options have
   failed or been excessively delayed.

1. Introduction and Context

   In recent months, there have been many discussions in various
   segments of the Internet community about "the top level domain
   problem".  Perhaps characteristically, that term is used by different
   groups to identify different, and perhaps nearly orthogonal, issues.
   Those issues include:





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   1.1.  A "domain administration policy" issue.

   1.2.  A "name ownership" issue, of which the trademark issue may
         constitute a special case.

   1.3.  An information location issue, specifically the problem of
         locating the appropriate domain, or information tied to a
         domain, for an entity given the name by which that entity is
         usually known.

   Of these, controversies about the first two may be inevitable
   consequences of the growth of the Internet.  There have been
   intermittent difficulties with top level domain adminstration and
   various attempts to use the domain registry function as a mechanism
   for control of service providers or services from time to time since
   a large number of such domains started being allocated.  Those
   problems led to the publication of the policy guidelines of
   [RFC1591].

   The third appears to be largely a consequence of the explosive growth
   of the World Wide Web and, in particular, the exposure of URL formats
   [URL] to the end user because no other mechanisms have been
   available.  The absence of an appropriate and adequately-deployed
   directory service has led to the assumption that it should be
   possible to locate the web pages for a company by use of a naming
   convention involving that company's name or product name, i.e., for
   the XYZ Company, a web page located at

        http://www.xyz.com/
   or
        http://www.xyz-company.com/

   has been assumed.

   However, as the network grows and as increasing numbers of web sites
   are rooted in domains other than ".COM", this convention becomes
   difficult to sustain: there will be too many organizations or
   companies with legitimate claims --perhaps in different lines of
   business or jurisdictions-- to the same short descriptive names.  For
   that reason, there has been a general sense in the community for
   several years that the solution to this information location problem
   lies, not in changes to the domain name system, but in some type of
   directory service.

   But such directory services have not come into being.  There has been
   ongoing controversy about choices of protocols and accessing
   mechanisms.  IETF has published specifications for several different
   directory and search protocols, including [WHOIS++], [RWHOIS],



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   [LDAP], [X500], [GOPHER].  One hypothesis about why this has not
   happened is that these mechanisms have been hard to select and deploy
   because they are much more complex than is necessary.  This document
   proposes an extremely simple alternative.

2. Using WHOIS

   The WHOIS protocol is the oldest directory access protocol in use on
   the Internet, dating in published form to March 1982 and first
   implemented somewhat earlier.  The procotol itself is simple and
   minimalist: the client opens a telnet connection to the WHOIS port
   (43) and transmits a line over it.  The server looks up the line in a
   fashion that it defines, returns one or more lines of information to
   the client, and closes the connection.

   We suggest that modifications or add-ins be created to Web browsers
   that would access a new, commercially-provided Whois server, sending
   a putative company name and receiving back one or more lines, each
   containing a URL followed by one or more blanks and then a matching
   company name (that order was chosen to minimize parsing problems:
   since URLs cannot contain blanks, the first blank character marks the
   end of the URL and the next non-blank marks the beginning of the
   company name).  As is usual with Whois, the criteria used by the
   server to match the incoming string is at the server's discretion.
   The difference between this and the protocol as documented in [WHOIS]
   is that exactly one company name is returned per line (see section 3
   for details of syntax).

   The client would then be expected to:

   (i) If a single line (company name and URL) is returned, either
       ask for confirmation or simply fetch the associated URL as if it
       had been typed by the user.

   (ii) If multiple lines (names) are returned, present the user with
        a choice, presumably showing company names rather than (or
        supplemented by) URLs, then fetch using the URL selected.

   Obviously, while the most convenient use of the services contemplated
   in this document would occur through a client that was part of, or
   intimately connected with, a Web browser, a user without that type of
   facility could utilize a traditional WHOIS client and paste or
   otherwise transfer the relevant information into the target location
   of a browser.







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3. Formats, versions, and international character sets

   Preliminary work with the approach suggested above suggests that some
   specific conventions about syntax and variations would be useful.

3.1 Line sent from client to server.

   These lines may take either of two forms:

   (i) A simple 7-bit ASCII string, containing a "company name"

   (ii) A string in the format (using the ABNF notation of RFC 2234
        [ABNF]):

       Variation "/" 1*Octet

           Variation :== "0" | ( Non-zero-digit 1*Digit)
           Non-zero-digit :== 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9
           Digit :== 0 | Non-zero-digit

       Where Octet is any eight-bit sequence, representing a prefixed
       variation number.

   The first form will be construed as equivalent to the second form
   with the leading string "0/".  Variation numbers are specified in
   section 3.3.

   In all cases, the interpretation of what "company name" might mean
   and, in particular, what variations of form or spelling,
   abbreviations, and so on, might be accepted is strictly up to the
   interpretation of the server.  If rules driving the server lead to
   the conclusion that a string matches some company in its data, the
   correctness or incorrectness of that decision is not covered by this
   specification.

   For variation 0 and, by default, for all others, any alphabetic text
   in lines is to be construed in a case-insensitive fashion.

3.2 Lines sent from server to client.

   The server is expected to return one or more lines to the client,
   depending on its interpretation of the input string.  In general,
   each line will consist, as described above, of a URL, a space, and a
   "company name".  This document deliberately does not specify the
   content or semantics of the "company name" string.  It might be a
   name, or a name and descriptive information such as location and type
   of business, or other information at the option of the server.  The




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   expectation, as mentioned above, is that the information will be
   displayed by the client to aid users in selecting the appropriate
   URL.

   These lines, consistent with normal Internet practice, will be
   terminated by a CR LF sequence (rather than one or the other of those
   control characters).

   When and if different variation numbers are introduced, their
   specifications may include variations on what the server is expected
   to return.

   In lieu of "URL and company name" responses, the Server may also
   return "error messages".  These take the form of lines containing:

         "///" SP String

    where the String is 7-bit ASCII with no control characters other
    than SP, unless the variation associated with the variation number
    specifies otherwise.  For this experiment, all "error messages" but
    the following two are discouraged:

          /// Not found
                    Indicating that the "company name" does not match
                    anything
          /// Variation not supported
                    Indicating that the variation number supplied by the
                    client is not recognized by the server.

3.3.  Registered variations

   The following two variations are established as part of this
   specification:

   0/        Query and response are in 7-bit ASCII, no controls other
             than SP, "Company name" separated from URL by one or more
             SP characters.

   1/        Query and response are in UTF-8, no controls other than
             SP, "Company name" separated from URL by one or more SP
             characters, no specification of language on either input or
             output.

   The IANA will maintain a registry of additional variations which it
   is hoped will be very short.  Requests for additional variations
   should be sent via email to: [e-mail].





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4. Alternatives not chosen

   Few comments on the initial drafts of this document addressed the
   basic model or protocol design for the service discussed.  Instead,
   they focused on inquiring about the decisions we didn't make and
   about beliefs about the protocol specification that were not intended
   by the authors.  The latter have been, we hope, corrected.  Questions
   of the following three types predominated in the first category.

4.1.  Why didn't you use <insert-favorite-directory-protocol-here>?

   Many notes raised the question of how much more could be done with a
   higher-powered directory protocol rather than the extremely simple
   WHOIS.  Questions were raised about LDAP, X.500 DAP, CCSO, RWHOIS,
   and WHOIS++.  We had several reasons for avoiding them.  The most
   important has been a strong commitment to see how much can be done
   with an extremely simplistic approach, and WHOIS represented the most
   simplistic approach we could find.  If it turns out to be too simple
   in practice, things can always evolve to one or more of the more
   advanced protocols.   But, if we started with one of them, we would
   never get that information.  Other issues included:

   * None of the existing directory proposals has really emerged as
     the "right" solution with a large installed base.  The deployed
     base of WHOIS and WHOIS clients is huge, and using it avoids either
     having to make a premature choice of "winner" or to become
     embroiled in the debate.

   * For the casual user, the mechanisms needed to activate the
     extensive attribute-based directory searches of the stronger
     protocols are just too complicated and may actually act as a
     deterrent to effective use.

   * Substantially since the dawn of the ARPANET, the Internet
     experience has been that setting up a directory service is easy,
     but that maintaining one and keeping the records up-to-date is
     extremely difficult.  The economics of operating an effective
     directory service and keeping everything up to date may will
     require a revenue-producing product.  Use of a very simple protocol
     for the basic service creates a situation in which basic service
     can rationally be given away while more advanced service are
     operated on a charge or subscription basis.

4.2 And why not use a Web search engine?

   Web search engines are immensely effective and powerful, but address
   a different problem than this protocol.  The protocol model here does
   involve a directory lookup, using a presumed company name as a key.



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   The quality of the result will depend on the quality of the
   underlying directory and the editorial and research work that goes
   into its construction (neither of which are matters for the protocol
   itself -- we trust that marketplace pressures will separate good
   servers from poor ones).  Web search engines are often more effective
   at locating information about companies than the specific company-
   designated web pages.

4.3 Why not return a more highly structured information format
    rather than a simple pair of URL and "company name"?

   Again, the goal was to keep things extremely simple and, in
   particular, permit minimal interpretation between the user's input
   and the query and between the response and a display or action.  Some
   of the inquiries on this subject were due to misunderstandings about
   the implications of the "company name" field; the semantics of that
   field have been clarified above.  We also wanted to avoid the level
   of standardization implied by a tagging scheme: highly-structured
   fields might lead either to interoperability problems or excessive
   restriction on what might be returned.

5. Thoughts on Directory Providers

   There is no technical reason why there should be only one provider of
   company name to URL mapping services using this protocol, nor is
   there any reason for registries of such providers.  Presumably,
   servers that provide the best-quality mappings will eventually
   prevail in the marketplace.  However, as with most traditional uses
   of WHOIS, it is desirable for implementations of clients (or Web
   browsers supporting this protocol) to allow for user choice of
   servers through configuration options or the equivalent.

6. Demo Application

   To illustrate the proposed functionality of this document, a
   prototype of both the server and client have been made able for
   demonstration purposes.

6.1 Server

   The TLD-WHOIS demonstration server is available at
   "companies.mci.net". The server contains a database of approximately
   209,000 company entries provided by Dun and Bradstreet.

   The server will generally respond back to a query within 15 seconds.
   If the server has the response cached from a previous query, the
   return time will be significantly shorter.




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