From: mitra@pandora.sf.ca.us (Mitra)
Subject: Re: URN to URC scenario
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 1994 03:51:44 GMT
Message-Id: <CLx1EB.MrA@pandora.sf.ca.us>
I think if we are clever we will be able to fold each of the requirements
people have expressed in the last few messages into a scheme
without bending, or unneccessarily complicating things.
For example - to incorporate Peter's desire to retrofit FTP archives
with MD5 checksums, then PeterD (or the IAFA group), register "MD5"
they are then the authority for "MD5" and can give out ids, giving out ids
in this case would just involve setting the rules that say "anyone
can give out an id as its MD5 checksum.
Now lets say we have a URN, "urn:md5/12344567", Someone trying to resolve this,
would try and look up "md5.urn.int" via DNS, and they'd either
end up with a failure - i.e. this URN is not resolvable, or they might end
up with the address (or URL) of an archie server that could resolve
MD5 checksums.
The other requirement I've heard recently, is the desire to have
self-publishers. this can be handled by having a naming authority that
allows any site to register URN's under its FQDN, provided that
no other site previously owning that FQDN has done so. This would take
a huge registration load off of IANA, especially when URN registration
ends up getting written in as part of a popular IIIR server.
One open question that I have for the DNS gurus, if we wanted to avoid
specifying where in the string is the point to do the lookup, then
will DNS allow this to happen - for example if we have a URN
of the form urn:net.path.mitra.123456 then is their a way to ask the
DNS for mitra.path.net.urn.int and have it return the URN->URC
server at path.net.urn.int if their is no server for "mitra.path.net",
ideally I'd like to be able to do this without having to put entries
into the DNS for each user at path.net (note that path,net would have to
guarrantee non-reuse of userid's)
- Mitra