- From: Henrik Frystyk Nielsen <frystyk@w3.org>
- Date: Wed, 15 May 1996 11:27:12 -0400
- To: Larry Masinter <masinter@parc.xerox.com>
- Cc: martin@mrrl.lut.ac.uk, www-talk@w3.org
Larry Masinter writes: > > I have an Internet Draft (draft-hamilton-whois-url-00.txt) which > > specifies a URL format for the WHOIS++ protocol using the scheme > > "whois." Now, it's been suggested that there really ought to be > > separate schemes for the old WHOIS protocol, WHOIS++, and RWhois > > - defined by (respectively) RFCs 954, 1835 and 1714. > > Personally, I'd prefer one URL scheme to three. I don't think there > are clear-cut rules for deciding, though. Are the various WHOIS > schemes interoperable? And is some of this obsoleted by LDAP? Regarding whois and whois++ I had a prototype of a whois++ protocol module in the libwww code some time ago. However, we quickly ran into the problem that whois and whois++ use the same port number (43 if I recall). As the protocols are made in such a way that it is impossible to distinguish the two from each other it is virtually impossible to automate the access. The rule must be that a URL scheme unambiguously defines an access scheme. Having two different URL schemes pointing to the same port is not a good idea unless you have a unique way of identifying them at another level. Unless this is the case I would strongly recommend using one single URL scheme. -- Henrik Frystyk Nielsen, <frystyk@w3.org> World-Wide Web Consortium, MIT/LCS NE43-356 545 Technology Square, Cambridge MA 02139, USA
Received on Wednesday, 15 May 1996 11:27:30 UTC