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Using the Registration Data Access Protocol (RDAP) with HTTP
draft-ietf-weirds-using-http-01

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This is an older version of an Internet-Draft that was ultimately published as RFC 7480.
Authors Andy Newton , Byron Ellacott , Ning Kong
Last updated 2012-12-05
Replaces draft-designteam-weirds-using-http
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draft-ietf-weirds-using-http-01
Network Working Group                                          A. Newton
Internet-Draft                                                      ARIN
Intended status: Standards Track                             B. Ellacott
Expires: June 8, 2013                                              APNIC
                                                                 N. Kong
                                                                   CNNIC
                                                        December 5, 2012

      Using the Registration Data Access Protocol (RDAP) with HTTP
                    draft-ietf-weirds-using-http-01

Abstract

   This document describes the usage of the Registration Data Access
   Protocol (RDAP) using HTTP.

Status of this Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
   Task Force (IETF).  Note that other groups may also distribute
   working documents as Internet-Drafts.  The list of current Internet-
   Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.

   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
   and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
   time.  It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
   material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

   This Internet-Draft will expire on June 8, 2013.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2012 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
   (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
   publication of this document.  Please review these documents
   carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
   to this document.  Code Components extracted from this document must
   include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
   described in the Simplified BSD License.

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Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  3
   2.  Terminology  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
   3.  Design Intents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
   4.  Queries  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
     4.1.  Accept Header  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
     4.2.  Query Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
   5.  Types of HTTP Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
     5.1.  Positive Answers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
     5.2.  Redirects  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
     5.3.  Negative Answers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
     5.4.  Malformed Queries  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
   6.  Extensibility  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
   7.  IANA Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
   8.  Internationalization Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
     8.1.  URIs and IRIs  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
     8.2.  Language Identifiers in Queries and Responses  . . . . . . 10
     8.3.  Language Identifiers in HTTP Headers . . . . . . . . . . . 10
   9.  Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
   Appendix A.  Cache Busting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
   Appendix B.  Changelog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
   Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

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1.  Introduction

   This document describes the usage of HTTP for Registration Data
   Directory Services running on RESTful web servers.  The goal of this
   document is to tie together the usage patterns of HTTP into a common
   profile applicable to the various types of Directory Services serving
   Registration Data using RESTful styling.  By giving the various
   Directory Services common behavior, a single client is better able to
   retrieve data from Directory Services adhering to this behavior.

   In designing these common usage patterns, this draft endeavours to
   satisfy requirements for a Registration Data Access Protocol (RDAP)
   that is documented in [draft-kucherawy-weirds-requirements].  This
   draft also introduces an additional design consideration to define a
   simple use of HTTP.  Where complexity may reside, it is the goal of
   this specification to place it upon the server and to keep the client
   as simple as possible.  A client implementation should be possible
   using common operating system scripting tools.

   This is the basic usage pattern for this protocol:

   1.  A client issues an HTTP query using GET.  As an example, a query
       for the network registration 192.0.2.0 might be
       http://example.com/ip/192.0.2.0.

   2.  If the receiving server has the information for the query, it
       examines the Accept header field of the query and returns a 200
       response with a response entity appropriate for the requested
       format.

   3.  If the receiving server does not have the information for the
       query but does have knowledge of where the information can be
       found, it will return a redirection response (3xx) with the
       Location: header containing an HTTP URL pointing to the
       information or another server known to have knowledge of the
       location of the information.  The client is expected to re-query
       using that HTTP URL.

   4.  If the receiving server does not have the information being
       requested and does not have knowledge of where the information
       can be found, it should return a 404 response.

   It is important to note that it is not the intent of this document to
   redefine the meaning and semantics of HTTP.  The purpose of this
   document is to clarify the use of standard HTTP mechanisms for this
   application.

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2.  Terminology

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
   document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [RFC2119].

   As is noted in SSAC Report on WHOIS Terminology and Structure
   [SAC-051], the term "Whois" is overloaded, often referring to a
   protocol, a service and data.  In accordance with [SAC-051], this
   document describes the base behavior for a Registration Data Access
   Protocol (RDAP).  [SAC-051] describes a protocol profile of RDAP for
   Doman Name Registries (DNRs), DNRD-AP.  This document and others from
   the IETF WEIRDS working group describe a single protocol, RDAP, for
   access to the data of both DNRs and Regional Internet Registries
   (RIRs).  RIRs are also often referred to as number resource
   registries and are responsible for the registration of IP address
   networks and autonomous system numbers.

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3.  Design Intents

   There are a few design criteria this document attempts to support.

   First, each query is meant to return either zero or one result.  With
   the maximum upper bound being set to one, the issuance of redirects
   is simplified to the known query/respone model used by HTTP
   [RFC2616].  Should a result contain more than one result, some of
   which are better served by other servers, the redirection model
   becomes much more complicated.

   Second, multiple response formats are supported by this protocol.  At
   present the IETF WEIRDS working group is defining only a JSON
   [RFC4627] response format, but server operators may use other data
   formats when those formats are requested.

   Third, HTTP offers a number of transport protocol mechanisms not
   described further in this document.  Operators are able to make use
   of these mechanisms according to their local policy, including cache
   control, authorization, compression, and redirection.  HTTP also
   benefits from widespread investment in scalability, reliability, and
   performance, and widespread programmer understanding of client
   behaviours for RESTful web services, reducing the cost to deploy
   Registration Data Directory Services and clients.

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4.  Queries

4.1.  Accept Header

   Clients SHOULD put the media type of the format they desire in the
   Accept header field.

      Accept: application/rdap

   Servers SHOULD respond with an appropriate media type in the Content-
   Type header in accordance with the preference rules for the Accept
   header in HTTP [RFC2616].

      Content-Type: application/rdap

   Clients MAY use a generic media type for the desired data format of
   the response (e.g. "application/json"), but servers SHOULD respond
   with the most appropriate media type (e.g. "application/rdap").  In
   other words, a client may use "application/json" to express that it
   desires JSON or "application/rdap" to express that it desires RDAP
   specific JSON, but the server would respond with "application/rdap".

4.2.  Query Parameters

   Servers SHOULD ignore unknown query parameters.  Use of unknown query
   parameters for cache-busting is described in Appendix A.

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5.  Types of HTTP Response

   This section describes the various types of responses a server may
   send to a client.  While no standard HTTP response code is forbidden
   in usage, at a minimum clients SHOULD understand the response codes
   described in this section.  It is expected that usage of response
   codes and types for this application not defined here will be
   described in subsequent documents.

5.1.  Positive Answers

   If a server has the information requested by the client and wishes to
   respond to the client with the information according to its policies,
   it SHOULD encode the answer in the format most appropriate according
   to the standard and defined rules for processing the HTTP Accept
   header, and return that answer in the body of a 200 response.

5.2.  Redirects

   If a server wishes to inform a client that the answer to a given
   query can be found elsewhere, it SHOULD return either a 301 or a 307
   response code and an HTTP URL in the Location: header.  The client is
   expected to issue a subsequent query using the given URL without any
   processing of the URL.  In other words, the server is to hand back a
   complete URL and the client should not have to transform the URL to
   follow it.

   A server SHOULD use a 301 response to inform the client of a
   permanent move and a 307 response otherwise.  For this application,
   such an example of a permanent move might be a top level domain (TLD)
   operator informing a client the information being sought can be found
   with another TLD operator (i.e. a query for the domain bar in
   foo.example is found at http://foo.example/domain/bar).

5.3.  Negative Answers

   If a server wishes to respond that it has no information regarding
   the query, it SHOULD return a 404 response code.  Optionally, it MAY
   include additional information regarding the negative answer in the
   HTTP entity body.

5.4.  Malformed Queries

   If a server receives a query which it cannot understand, it SHOULD
   return a 400 response code.  Optionally, it MAY include additional
   information regarding this negative answer in the HTTP entity body.

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6.  Extensibility

   For extensibility purposes, this document defines an IANA registry
   for prefixes used in JSON [RFC4627] data serialization and URI path
   segments (see Section 7).

   Prefixes and identifiers SHOULD only consist of the alphabetic ASCII
   characters A through Z in both uppercase and lowercase, the numerical
   digits 0 through 9, underscore characters, and SHOULD NOT begin with
   an underscore character, numerical digit or the characters "xml".
   The following describes the production of JSON names in ABNF
   [RFC5234].

   ABNF for JSON names

     name = ALPHA *( ALPHA / DIGIT / "_" )

                                 Figure 1

   This restriction is a union of the Ruby programming language
   identifier syntax and the XML element name syntax and has two
   purposes.  First, client implementers using modern programming
   languages such as Ruby or Java may use libraries that automatically
   promote JSON names to first order object attributes or members.
   Second, a clean mapping between JSON and XML is easy to accomplish
   using these rules.

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7.  IANA Considerations

   This specification proposes an IANA registry for RDAP extensions.
   The purpose of this registry is to ensure uniqueness of extension
   identifiers.  The extension identifier is used as prefix in JSON
   names and as a prefix of path segments in RDAP URLs.

   The production rule for these identifiers is specified in Section 6.

   In accordance with RFC5226, the IANA policy for assigning new values
   shall be Specification Required: values and their meanings must be
   documented in an RFC or in some other permanent and readily available
   reference, in sufficient detail that interoperability between
   independent implementations is possible.

   The following is a preliminary template for an RDAP extension
   registration:

      Extension identifier: the identifier of the extension

      Registry operator: the name of the registry operator

      Published specification: RFC number, bibliographical reference or
      URL to a permanent and readily available specification

      Person & email address to contact for further information: The
      names and email addresses of individuals for contact regarding
      this registry entry

      Intended usage: brief reasons for this registry entry

   The following is an example of a registration in the RDAP extension
   registry:

      Extension identifier: lunarNic

      Registry operator: The Registry of the Moon, LLC

      Published specification: http://www.example/moon_apis/rdap

      Person & email address to contact for further information:
      Professor Bernardo de la Paz <berny@moon.example>

      Intended usage: COMMON

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8.  Internationalization Considerations

8.1.  URIs and IRIs

   Clients MAY use IRIs as they see fit, but MUST transform them to URIs
   [RFC3986] for interaction with RDAP servers.  RDAP servers MUST use
   URIs in all responses, and clients MAY transform these URIs to IRIs.

8.2.  Language Identifiers in Queries and Responses

   Depending on the data format of the response, servers MAY include
   data in character sets other than ASCII and languages other than
   English (the data format will most likely be in Unicode and almost
   certainly languages other than English will be encountered).  Under
   most scenarios, clients requesting data will not signal that the data
   be returned in a particular language or script.  On the other hand,
   when servers return data and have knowledge that the data is in a
   language or script, the data should be annotated with language
   identifiers thus allowing clients to process and display the data
   accordingly.

   A language identifier in the response is specified in section 5.3 of
   [draft-ietf-weirds-json-response].  It is used to indicate the
   language/script of the response data.  It is possible that
   registration data is stored in several different languages and
   returned in a single response.  Data portion of different language
   types SHOULD be tagged with its corresponding identifier if known.

8.3.  Language Identifiers in HTTP Headers

   Given the description of the use of language identifiers in
   Section 8.2, unless otherwise specified servers SHOULD ignore the
   HTTP [RFC2616] Accept-Language header when formulating responses.

   However, servers MAY return language identifiers in the Content-
   Language header so as to inform clients of the intended language of
   HTTP layer messages.

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9.  Normative References

   [draft-kucherawy-weirds-requirements]
              Kucherawy, M., "Requirements For Internet Registry
              Services", Work in progress: Internet
              Drafts draft-kucherawy-weirds-requirements-04.txt,
              April 2011.

   [draft-ietf-weirds-json-response]
              Newton, A. and S. Hollenbeck, "JSON Responses for the
              Registration Data Access Protocol (RDAP)", Work in
              progress: Internet
              Drafts draft-ietf-weirds-json-response-01.txt,
              December 2012.

   [SAC-051]  Piscitello, D., Ed., "SSAC Report on Domain Name WHOIS
              Terminology and Structure", September 2011.

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.

   [RFC4627]  Crockford, D., "The application/json Media Type for
              JavaScript Object Notation (JSON)", RFC 4627, July 2006.

   [RFC3986]  Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and L. Masinter, "Uniform
              Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax", STD 66,
              RFC 3986, January 2005.

   [RFC2616]  Fielding, R., Gettys, J., Mogul, J., Frystyk, H.,
              Masinter, L., Leach, P., and T. Berners-Lee, "Hypertext
              Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1", RFC 2616, June 1999.

   [RFC5234]  Crocker, D. and P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for Syntax
              Specifications: ABNF", STD 68, RFC 5234, January 2008.

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Appendix A.  Cache Busting

   To overcome issues with misbehaving HTTP [RFC2616] cache
   infrastructure, clients MAY use an adhoc and improbably used query
   parameter with a random value of their choosing.  As Section 4.2
   instructs servers to ignore unknown parameters, this is unlikely to
   have any known side effects.

   An example of using an unknown query parameter to bust caches:

     http://example.com/ip/192.0.2.0?__fuhgetaboutit=xyz123

   Use of an unknown parameter to overcome misbehaving caches is not
   part of any specification and is offered here for informational
   purposes.

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Appendix B.  Changelog

   Initial WG -00:  Updated to working group document 2012-September-20

   -01

      *  Updated for the sections moved to the JSON responses draft.

      *  Simplified media type, removed "level" parameter.

      *  Updated 2119 language and added boilerplate.

      *  In section 1, noted that redirects can go to redirect servers
         as well.

      *  Added Section 8.2 and Section 8.3.

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Authors' Addresses

   Andrew Lee Newton
   American Registry for Internet Numbers
   3635 Concorde Parkway
   Chantilly, VA  20151
   US

   Email: andy@arin.net
   URI:   http://www.arin.net

   Byron J. Ellacott
   Asia Pacific Network Information Center
   6 Cordelia Street
   South Brisbane  QLD 4101
   Australia

   Email: bje@apnic.net
   URI:   http://www.apnic.net

   Ning Kong
   China Internet Network Information Center
   4 South 4th Street, Zhongguancun, Haidian District
   Beijing  100190
   China

   Phone: +86 10 5881 3147
   Email: nkong@cnnic.cn

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