RFC 1588 (rfc1588) - Page 3 of 35
White Pages Meeting Report
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
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