DNS TF meeting

      Unfortunately I didn't find the spare cycles to dive into
      the rwhois project info, but I think there could be some
      hidden synergy. Do you have any ideas on this aspect?
Well, actually it's quite trivial:
- What the RIPE NCC has to do is to implement a
  new "Topdomain" object, with absolutely minimal
  information in the database:
    *td: nl
    *de: Top level domain for the Netherlands
    *ws: <server_name>.nl
    *mb: <either NL-DOMREG or RIPE-NCC>
    *so: RIPE
  where the presence of *td would signal to the
  whois server software that queries for both NL
  and <domain>.NL must be forwarded to the whois
  server specified in the *ws attribute.
- A top level domain registry has 2 options then:
  1) If it can't provide reliable whois service
     itself (yet): stick to the current situation,
     feeding the RIPE database with domain objects.
     Not ideal, since the Domain object in the RIPE
     database really should disappear, and I'm not
     the only one who thinks about it that way.
  2) Provide its own whois service. This service
     would be accessible directly or indirectly
     via 'whois -h whois.ripe.net <domain>'. This
     whois service should preferably run on the
     same host that is the primary nameserver for
     the top level domain, although of course this
     is not mandatory.
The NL whois server is almost finished. In fact
it's just a shell script. And of course, once it's
finished and works well, I'm willing to give it to
other TLD registrars.
The script will include notifying the registrar in
case of discrepancies between the administration
and the zone file, from both of which the script
will take its information.


	Piet