RFC 2148 (rfc2148) - Page 1 of 15

Deployment of the Internet White Pages Service

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Network Working Group                                   H. Alvestrand
Request for Comments: 2148                                    UNINETT
BCP: 15                                                       P. Jurg
Category: Best Current Practice                               SURFnet
                                                       September 1997


             Deployment of the Internet White Pages Service

Status of this Memo

   This document specifies an Internet Best Current Practices for the
   Internet Community, and requests discussion and suggestions for
   improvements.  Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

1.  Summary and recommendations

   This document makes the following recommendations for organizations
   on the Internet:

     (1)   An organization SHOULD publish public E-mail addresses and
           other public address information about Internet users
           within their site.

     (2)   Most countries have laws concerning publication of
           information about persons. Above and beyond these, the
           organization SHOULD follow the recommendations of [1].

     (3)   The currently preferable way for publishing the information
           is by using X.500 as its data structure and naming scheme
           (defined in [4] and discussed in [3], but some countries
           use a refinement nationally, like [15] for the US). The
           organization MAY additionally publish it using additional
           data structures such as whois++.

     (4)   The organization SHOULD make the published information
           available to LDAP clients, by allowing LDAP servers access
           to their data".

     (5)   The organization SHOULD NOT attempt to charge for simple
           access to the data.

   In addition, it makes the following recommendations for various and
   sundry other parties:

     (1)   E-mail vendors SHOULD include LDAP lookup functionality
           into their products, either as built-in functionality or by
           providing translation facilities.



Alvestrand & Jurg        Best Current Practice
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