Internet-Draft                                 Walther H. Diechmann
Category: Informational               		   ALCO Company aps
Expires May 31, 1997                                       Feb 1997


                    Shared Registry management
            (draft-iahc-diechmann-reg-management-00.txt)


SUBSTITUTION
This document effectively substitutes the document issued by this
author: draft-iahc-diechmann-localisation-00.txt. The ends to this
document fully substitutes that of said document.

ABSTRACT

The control of DNS registry and IP-addressing space are keys to 
controlling the provision of services on the Internet, nationally 
as well as internationally. Making the competition work in the 
marketplace demands fair and equal access to the control of these
'resources' - one could metaphorically draw parallels to the fishing 
in international waters.

A fair and equal access to the control of DNS registries could be
developed using the Internet as a means to distributing access and 
control to the individual ISP.


BACKGROUND

Service provision on the Internet is closely linked with the provision
of domain names and adequate IP-addressing space. To the individual ISP 
this means relying on services rendered by operators that by nature and line
of products themselves are competitors to the service requesting ISP (this 
is the case in Denmark and probably in a number of other countries).

Subscribers will for various reasons want to change service provider from
time to time and given a potentiel subscriber base of 100+ million the
IP Addressing management imposed on access and backbone providers will 
be monumental!


PROPOSAL

We propose to build a management system for the control of DNS registries
and the IP addressing on a global basis, based partially on SNMP and RFC 1884 
(pertaining to the addressing scheme) and partially on the proposals by 
IAHC (pertaining to stewardship of the registrar function and performance) 
that will allow any ISP or by the broadest definition any subscriber to add 
entries to the DNS / IP registry.


TECHNICAL IMPLEMENTATION

We propose the registry management system design to envision a management
agent built into the IPv6 routers facilitating automated routing updateability,
using the SNMP to communicate between agents of the registry management system 
and agents of routing equipment.

We propose the organisational structure behind the registry management system
to be:

              general international assembly of ISP's
                |                               |
board of registry steward supervisors   board of root name server supervisors
                |                               |
        registry stewards                 root name server stewards
                |                               |
registry database hotel contractors   root name server hotel contractors

We propose the board of registry steward supervisors to appoint stewards and to 
negotiate with registry database hotel contractors. We propose the registry 
stewards to audit registry database hotel contractors' performance and further 
to function as ombudsman to ISP's. We propose the registry database hotel 
contractors to maintain and manage registry database services to ISP's and by
contracting to hotel the registry database renounce their interest in providing
other services on the Internet (eg. access provision and web-hotel). We propose
the board of root name server supervisors to appoint root name server stewards
and to negotiate with root name server hotel contractors. We propose the root
name server stewards to audit the root name server hotel contractors' performance.
We propose the root name server hotel contractors to maintain and manage root
name server services to ISP's (and in effect; to subscribers) by contracting to 
hotel the root name servers renounce their interest in providing other services 
on the Internet.

We propose the registry database to provide HTTP based access to inserting, 
updating and deleting records in the database and to provide agents for automated
updating of name-servers and routing equipment.

We propose the hierachy of name servers to be 

			root name servers (1-2 per continent)
					|
			   TLD name servers (2-3 per TLD)
					|
			    SLD name servers (2 per SLD)

We propose that 1 registry database per TLD is contracted for and that one registry
database hotel contractor can apply for the hotel of several databases.


ISSUES TO BE ADDRESSED

- security:	On issue not addressed here is security. Automated updateability 
		in routing equipment will demand provision of secure communication 
		and authentication by system agents. Questions are

		:how can complete rewrites of the DNS system by hackers by avoided?
		:how can inserting bodies be validated on logon
		:how can authentication information administratively be processed?

- contending:	Another issue is that of contending inserts. Conflicting interests
		by inserting bodies will demand for a standard first-served policy to
		be backed up with additional policies stating the ways to solve
		contending inserts.

EPILOG

We see the efficient management and control of the DNS and IP addressing schemes as
primary keys to sustained growth of the Internet and that fair and equal access to
these key 'resources' of the Internet will provide for continued optimal competition
in the marketplace. 

Author

Walther H. Diechmann
walt@alco.dk