Re: URI resolution (was Re: Summary of 8 April 2002 TAG teleconference)

Simon St.Laurent wrote:

> On Tue, 2002-04-09 at 16:41, Ian B. Jacobs wrote:
> 
>>Simon St.Laurent wrote:
>>
>>
>>>On Tue, 2002-04-09 at 11:20, Ian B. Jacobs wrote:
>>>  SW: There is a tone in the IETF about trying to
>>>  have a mechanism to resolve URNs.
>>>  TBL: Yes, those people who favor URNs in the
>>>  IETF claim that they are building a mechanism to
>>>  resolve URNs. We have a working resolution
>>>  mechanism; building a second one is in general a
>>>  bad idea.
>>>
>>>Clarification request.  I assume that the URN resolution mechanism the
>>>IETF is building is DDDS.  What is the W3C's "working resolution
>>>mechanism"?
>>>
>>The "We" above doesn't refer to W3C, it refers to the Internet
>>community. The resolution mechanism is the DNS.
>>
> 
> I have to admit that DNS by itself sounds like a very weak solution to
> URN (and URI) resolution, especially in the light of things like:
> 
> http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-urn-net-procedures-10.txt
> DDDS Part Five: URI.ARPA Assignment Procedures
> 
> Also:
> http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2169.txt
>  A Trivial Convention for using HTTP in URN Resolution (RFC 2169)
> 
> There is the experimental:
> http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2168.txt
> Resolution of Uniform Resource Identifiers using the Domain Name System
> 
> But somehow I don't think that's what you mean.


I did indeed mean DNS, though that may not have been what
TBL meant.

The DNS mechanism in HTTP space works, but is fragile.
 From "Web Architecture from 50,000 Feet" [1]:

   "The Achilles' heel of the HTTP space is the only centralized
    part, the ownership and government of the root of the DNS tree.
    As a feature common and mandatory to the entire HTTP Web, the DNS
    root is a critical resource whose governance by and for the world
    as a whole in a fair way is essential. This concern is not
    currently addressed by the W3C, except indirectly though
    involvement with ICANN."

Presumably since the world has invested a lot in this mechanism, I 
have heard people suggest that the community try to fix it rather 
than deploy another mechanism from scratch. See Persistent Domains 
[2] as one proposal.

  _ Ian


[1] http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Architecture

[2] http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/PersistentDomains


-- 
Ian Jacobs (ij@w3.org)   http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs
Tel:                     +1 718 260-9447

Received on Tuesday, 9 April 2002 17:46:54 UTC