[gnso-rds-pdp-wg] Apologies, and some reflections on requirements

[Carlton Samuels]

Coming to this conversation late but as a member of the EWG, my
recollection is we took seriously the stated objective to chart a next
generation RDDS unfettered by existing WHOIS constraints.

To that end, I was one of those who insisted and the group accepted and
grappled with the basic question; was there a need for a RDDS and, to what
purpose. For those mindful of the ALAC perspective, this would not be new;
the ALAC is on record from as early as 2009 insisting that for policy
development purposes, the need and purpose for a RDDS ought, by reason and
judgment, to be the first declarative act of any policy development
process.  You would have seen a reprise of that principle here.

We were acutely aware that some principles we espoused are contrary by
nature - privacy vs. security, transparency vs. confidentiality and so on -
and that balancing the scale between contention sets of principles was not
going to be for the faint-hearted. Some time ago I used a metaphor to
describe what was achieved; we set out to design and build a sleek
racehorse but with the contentions, likely ended up with a two-humped
camel. Naturally, some took umbrage on behalf of camels.

My recollection - and the record will show - the EWG spent an inordinate
amount of time looking at use cases, the thinking being it would allow
extraction of a set of principles grounded in facts on the ground.  Yes,
some of us had concerns about this as starting point to get to principles;
use cases conflated both appropriate and alleged inappropriate uses,
highlighting some of the alleged noisome abuses. Some of us soldiered on ,
embracing the idea that a comprehensive problem statement provides the best
indicator to an improved model. This is why the gripes of current
stakeholders, the expert opinions and deeper knowledge of what ails the
current system took so much time of our deliberations.
The mitigation model that emerged is fairly easy to script. I cannot recall
any contest to the idea that data accuracy is sine qua non for any RDDS.
Yes, we are very much aware of the distributed nature of current WHOIS and
even examined a model so configured in the solution set we discussed.
Again, balancing the contentions, the centralized database offers certain
advantages - and these are listed in details - at least for standard
enforcement, query and access control. The concept of a minimum set of RDDS
data elements for global unfettered display stems from privacy concerns
and, coincidentally, a nod to the 'thin' model. Gated access in the model
addressed the concerns from the perspective of a broader set of business
reasons for RDDS access, privacy and the evaluation of and better knowledge
of purposeful use.

I could give a lot more examples that underscore a different narrative.
Not just because I spent almost 2 years of my life working this on a truly
voluntary basis - I do not make a living from the ecosystem and my day job
has no connection to it - but for the fact I sincerely believe that what
was achieved was remarkable in and of itself.

-Carlton


==============================
Carlton A Samuels
Mobile: 876-818-1799
*Strategy, Planning, Governance, Assessment & Turnaround*
=============================

On Wed, Jun 29, 2016 at 8:04 PM, Gomes, Chuck <cgomes at verisign.com> wrote:

> Andrew,
>
> I am sorry to take so long to respond to your very thoughtful message but
> as you know I have been pretty busy here in Helsinki.  It seems to me
> personally that you make some suggestions that could possibly be
> constructive to the work ahead but I have two primary concerns:
>
> 1. I am pretty sure that it would require a charter change.  To do that
> would require going back to the GNSO Council with the proposed changes and
> seeking their approval.  That is something that is not out of the question
> but it could cause some delays and I would want to make sure that there is
> strong WG support for doing so.  Also, I think we need to remember that a
> lot of very smart people spent quite a bit of time developing the framework
> that resulted in the charter so I think we should consider possible changes
> with that in mind.
>
> 2. My understanding is that EWG debated things like you are suggesting
> quite intensely.  As you know I was not a member of the EWG but Lisa has
> provided some thoughts about that I include below.
>
> " It might be useful to reflect upon the EWG's experience with system
> modeling. After starting with use cases, some EWG members needed a system
> model against which to test principles on purposes, data needs, and
> associated privacy, access, and accuracy issues. This led to the EWG's
> Initial Report proposing both a set of principles and an Aggregated RDS
> system model to support those principles - but without much explanation of
> the ARDS. Over the year that followed, the EWG evaluated half a dozen
> system models, drilling deeper into two (Federated and Synchronized) to
> examine feasibility and costs before recommending the SRDS. Both SRDS and
> FRDS models use RDAP; neither stores data in a single physical location.
> While the SRDS is a "thick" storage model where queries are served from
> synchronized data, the runner-up FRDS actually uses "thin" registries,
> querying data from registrars and validators in real-time.
>
> "While some possible requirements may reflect a particular system model -
> for example, those drawn from today's WHOIS policies -- our PDP WG has yet
> to consider whether to recommend a next-gen system. But no matter what
> model we recommend, perhaps we can learn from the EWG's experience. First,
> while envisioning a possible new model early on was helpful to some,
> reaching agreement on a recommended model was not possible until the EWG
> was nearly finished, following feasibility and cost analysis. Second, while
> each had pros/cons, both models were found to be capable of supporting the
> EWG's principles. In other words, model choice did not drive the EWG's
> principles - principles and criteria such as cost drove the EWG's choice of
> model."
>
> I want to add to Lisa's thoughts my own personal opinion:  I don't think
> the issue of Federated v. Synchronized is a closed issue.  My understanding
> is that the final recommendation in the EWG report could have been more the
> result of the desire to finish the work than a strong consensus.  Whether I
> am right on that or not, our WG can consider both and make our own decision
> between either one or some variation.
>
> Finally, I want to encourage all WG members to share your thoughts on
> Andrews comments and on my responses above.
>
> Chuck
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: gnso-rds-pdp-wg-bounces at icann.org [mailto:
> gnso-rds-pdp-wg-bounces at icann.org] On Behalf Of Andrew Sullivan
> Sent: Friday, June 24, 2016 10:04 PM
> To: gnso-rds-pdp-wg at icann.org
> Subject: [gnso-rds-pdp-wg] Apologies, and some reflections on requirements
>
> Dear colleagues,
>
> Apologies first.  I'm not going to be in Helsinki.  I'm in the middle of a
> move from NH back to Toronto, and it turns out that my movers'
> understanding of, "I need to leave on $date," entails arranging things
> such that goods will arrive after $date.  Alas, in this case the goods
> arrive Monday.  I will attempt to follow the ICANN meetings remotely next
> week, but I expect it will be tricky.
>
> I have been deeply dissatisfied with the way the work is going, and I
> believe it is because I see a mismatch in what we are trying to do and the
> kind of system we are trying to do it to.  In particular, I think we are
> trying to treat the RDS as a single monolithic system, and attempting to
> build "requirements" that match that assumption.  Here is an effort to
> sketch why I think that.  I didn't have time to write a short note, &c.
> &c.  Sorry this is long.
>
> Since the very introduction of the competitive-registrar model (and
> arguably before that), the RDS has been a distributed database.  It is far
> less successful than the other distrubuted database we all know and love --
> DNS -- but it is nevertheless distributed.
>
> The distribution comes from different parties having various parts of the
> data.  In so-called "thin" registries, this was always the case.
> The registry has names and nameservers, and since the invention of
> registrars knows who the registrar is.  But if you wanted to know certain
> kinds of data, you had to ask the registrar in question.
>
> Because in (say) 1999-2001 nobody had anything better than the
> whois/rwhois/whois++ protocol(s) to deliver this kind of data, a whole
> bunch of bad compromises got enshrined in policy.  First, we continued to
> use whois and its descendents (anything on port 43) as the model for all of
> this.  The plain fact is that whois was obsolete nearly at birth.  It's a
> terrible protocol, and should be taken behind the ice house and put out of
> its misery.
>
> Second, in order to "fix up" whois, clients were created all over the
> Internet that built in a bunch of assumptions about whom to ask for what
> data.  The consequence of this was that clients routinely got bad data as
> they queried the wrong server.  Old registrar data hung around even after a
> transfer.  When I worked on the org transition from Verisign to PIR in 2003
> (?), it took a long time before whois clients stopped asking Verisign about
> org data.  And so on.
>
> Third, in an attempt to hack around the above technical flaws in an
> already-obsolete protocol, "thick whois" gained popularity in possibly the
> worst possible arrangement known to data science.  Instead of insisting
> that registries hold the data and that registrars and everyone else treat
> the registry data as The Truth, we created "thick"
> whois in registries _without allowing registrars to stop their service_.
> Any half-competent database person will tell you that storing "the same
> data" in two places that don't have tight connections is an excellent way
> to create data inconsistency, but is not a good way to arrive at the
> truth.  (Latterly, as though illustrating the tendency of people to double
> down on bad ideas, there have been suggestions that ICANN should run the
> One Giant RDS of the Universe and hold all the data in a central place.
> What could possibly go wrong?)
>
> The thread running through this history of error is the idea that the RDS
> is one system.  But like the DNS, it only appears to be one system.  It's
> actually a "distributed database", where in this case the distribution is
> separable on organization lines.  That is, registries -- including ICANN,
> who can be thought of in this case as both the registry and registrar for
> the root zone -- have some data.
> Registrars have some other data.  Resellers and privacy/proxy services
> have yet other data.  In many cases, the data does not need to be shared
> across these organizational lines to make it queryable by humans.
>
> The reason that isn't clear to most of us is because whois -- the RDS we
> use today -- _was_ designed as a monolithic system.  It was designed that
> way because back when it was created -- RFC 812 is from _1982_! -- the
> database _was_ a monolithic database.  Whois (the protocol and the client
> program) continues to have all the deficiencies for distributed use that
> you might expect of a program or protocol designed to talk to exactly one
> authoritative service.
> Whois++ and rwhois attempted to graft on to this basic protocol some
> distributed operation, but the graft didn't really take and the ornamental
> shrub now looks like a weed.
>
> People have nevertheless internalized the whois-based thinking, which is
> why we keep asking things like, "What data should be collected?"
> In a distributed system like this, that's barely interesting, for the
> commercial interests in this case all militate against collecting data that
> nobody needs for any function.  Instead, we should ask what data should be
> collected _by different actors_.  This implicitly involves describing what
> those actors are doing to require the data.
>
> The nice thing, of course, is that protocol designers have done _a lot_ of
> this work for us, when they were working on RDAP.  They did this because
> they were trying to come up with use cases for the protocol, which finally
> did away with the monolithic-system thinking of whois and offers us a
> protocol designed precisely to work in the distributed-database environment
> that is the actual registration system.  That we even still have a work
> step that involves evaluating what protocol we're going to use for all this
> makes me a little ill.
>
> It seems to me that we can just say that we have to embrace the
> distributed-database fact.  For first, it's a fact of how registration
> actually works now.  If we don't agree with that, I think we should give
> up.  Second, it's consistent with how every single other thing on the
> Internet that has not crashed and burned works.  The Internet cannot scale
> depending on monolithic systems.  And nobody has the power to impose one
> anyway.
>
> Once we have done that, there are still important policy issues about what
> data ought to be collected by anyone, under what conditions they might
> reveal it to someone else (and who that someone else is), and so on.  But
> there are empirical tests for whether some of the answers people are
> proposing really match the distributed nature of the system.  If they
> don't, we can close off those avenues of inquiry, because they'll never be
> productive.
>
> Best regards,
>
> A
>
>
> --
> Andrew Sullivan
> ajs at anvilwalrusden.com
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