Resource Capabilities Discovery (rescap) ---------------------------------------- Charter Last Modified: 2001-07-31 Current Status: Active Working Group Chair(s): James Galvin Michael Mealling Applications Area Director(s): Ned Freed Patrik Faltstrom Applications Area Advisor: Ned Freed Mailing Lists: General Discussion:rescap@cs.utk.edu To Subscribe: rescap-request@cs.utk.edu Archive: ftp://cs.utk.edu/pub/rescap Description of Working Group: Abstract: A variety of resource identifiers have been widely deployed on the Internet as a means of identifying various resources, services, and destinations. However, a means of attaching a set of attributes or characteristics to a given resource identifier and subsequently assessing those attributes or characteristics has not been specified and deployed. A particularly important resolution service of this general type is one which, when given a mail address identifying a particular mail recipient, will return a series of attributes describing the capabilities of that recipient. This differs from a directory service in that no searching or other advanced query operations are involved. The primary purpose of this service is to distribute information about resources or services to the global Internet; as such, it is not intended for dissemination of private information. However, the group will also consider whether there is a need for the query protocol to include authentication, and thus permit administrators to restrict the capabilities that are returned according to a locally specified security policy. The first task of this working group will be to define a general resolution protocol that will translate resource identifiers to a list of attributes. At a minimum the service must be capable of returning mail recipient capabilities as described above, but ideally the service should also handle more general capability and characteristics discovery. The second task of this working group will be to define an administrative model and update protocol that can be used to set up and maintain the information the resolution protocol accesses. This protocol will obviously require strong authentication. The working group will also consider whether privacy services are necessary for the update protocol, and include such services in the protocol if it finds that they are necessary. The service resulting from the combination of these two protocols must meet the following requirements: (0) The resolution protocol must be highly scalable, as the intent is to deploy it very widely. (1) Resolution protocol and server overhead must be very low, as some applications will make very heavy use of it. (2) Identifiers input to the resolution service must be formatted as Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) containing one or more DNS domains. Note that mail addresses can be presented as mailto: URIs to meet this requirement. (3) Facilities to support inheritance within the attribute store will be essential, as the number of identifiers may be very large. Specifically, mechanisms must be provided by which administrators can set default values for members of their administrative domains. (4) Existing protocols will be profiled for use as part of this service whenever possible rather than developing new protocols. In particular: (a) The DNS must be used as the first step in the resolution service, This is because all the URIs under consideration here contain a DNS domain and the DNS is already properly delegated. (b) Existing DNS record types such as SRV and NAPTR will be used if feasible, to ease deployment. (c) A lightweight resolution protocol may be defined by this working group if no existing protocol proves to be suitable. (d) An existing administrative model and maintenance protocol will be used if feasible. Possible candidates for this include ACAP and LDAPv3. The means to register and extend the set of attributes must be specified. However, specification of actual attributes needed by various applications of this service is outside of the scope of this working group. This group will collaborate with the ENUM working group to determine the degree to which it is appropriate for the two efforts to share technology or protocols when solving their respective problems. Goals and Milestones: Jan 00 Submit Internet-Draft specifying service requirements and design goals. Mar 00 Submit Internet-Draft specifying resolution protocol. Sep 00 Submit Internet-Draft specifying administrative/update protocol requirements and design goals. Dec 00 Submit Internet-Draft specifying administration/update protocol. Internet-Drafts: Posted Revised I-D Title ------ ------- -------------------------------------------- Dec 99 Jun 02 ResCap Requirements Apr 00 Jan 02 RESCAP Scenarios Jun 02 Jun 02 RESCAP Profile for Mail User Agents Request For Comments: None to date.