RFC 1588 (rfc1588) - Page 3 of 35

White Pages Meeting Report

RFC 1588                   White Pages Report              February 1994


   4) What should the deployment strategy be?

      Some central management must be provided, and easy to use user
      interfaces (such as the Gopher "gateway"), must be widely
      deployed.  The selection of a naming scheme must be documented.
      We should capitalize on the existing infrastructure of already
      deployed X.500 DSAs.  The "common ground" model should be adopted.
      A specification of the simplest common communication form must be
      developed.  Information about how to set up a new server (of
      whatever kind) in "cookbook" form should be made available.

   RECOMMENDATIONS

    1.  Adopt the common ground approach.  Encourage multiple client and
        server types, and the standardization of an interoperation
        protocol between them.  The clients may be simple clients,
        front-ends, "gateways", or embedded in other information access
        clients, such as Gopher or WWW (World Wide Web) client programs.
        The interoperation protocol will define message types, message
        sequences, and data fields.  An element of this protocol should
        be the use of Universal Record Locators (URLs).

    2.  Promote the development of index-servers.  The index-servers
        should use several different methods both for gathering data for
        their indices, and for searching their indices.

    3.  Support a central management for the X.500 system.  To get the
        best advantage of the effort already invested in the X.500
        directory system it is essential to provide the relatively small
        amount of central management necessary to keep the system
        functioning.

    4.  Support the development of security certificate storage and
        retrieval from the white pages service.  One practical approach
        is initially to focus on getting support from the existing X.500
        directory infrastructure.  This effort should also include
        design and development of the storage and retrieval of security
        certificates for other white pages services, such as Whois++.













Postel & Anderson