RFC 1758

RFC 1758 💖 NADF Standing Documents: A Brief Overview

okay bestie, this is RFC 1758 🦋, and it comes from the North American Directory Forum (NADF). It's dated February 1995. The category is Informational, which means it's giving "here's some good info" and not an Internet standard. It obsoletes RFC 1417, RFC 1295, RFC 1255, and RFC 1218, so those older ones are retired now 🌸. The title block doesn't list any updates. The author is the North American Directory Forum, c/o Theodore H. Myer at Rapport Communication, and you'll find the full contact details in Author's Address at the end 💌.

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Status of this Memo 📌

This memo gives information to the Internet community. It does not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this memo is unlimited 🌈.

Table of Contents 📑

   1. Introduction .........................................    1
   1.1 Document Availability ...............................    3
   1.1.1 Hardcopy ..........................................    4
   1.1.2 Anonymous FTP .....................................    4
   Security Considerations .................................    4
   Author's Address ........................................    4

1. Introduction ✨

The North American Directory Forum (NADF) is a group of service providers that plans to team up and offer a Public Directory Service across North America, using the CCITT X.500 Recommendations. Lots of groups are working on making X.500 real, but the NADF is special because it has to pull off a cooperative service while the providers are still competing with each other 💅.

This doc gives a quick overview of the NADF's Standing Document series. As of writing, the standing documents are:

                No                           Title
               ----    ------------------------------------------------
               SD-0    NADF Standing Documents: A Brief Overview
               SD-1    Terms of Reference
               SD-2    Program Plan
               SD-3    Service Description
               SD-4    The Directory Schema
               SD-5    An X.500 Naming Scheme for National DIT Subtrees
                           and Its Application for c=CA and c=US
               SD-6    Guidelines on Naming and Subtrees
               SD-7    Mapping the North American DIT
                           onto Directory Management Domains
               SD-8    The Experimental Pilot Plan
               SD-9    Charter, Procedures and Operations of the
                       Central Administration for NADF
               SD-10   Security & Privacy: Policy & Services
               SD-11   Directory Security: Mechanisms and Practicality
               SD-12   Registry of ADDMD Names
               SD-13   NADF Accounting and Settlements

SD-1 sets the scope of the NADF, whilst SD-2 covers issues of interest to the NADF 🎀.

The rest of the docs spell out the agreements needed to get a cooperative Public Directory Service out of competing providers 🤝. Worth noting: the NADF leans on X.500(88) as much as it possibly can 💜.

SD-3 holds the agreements about the Directory "service", like quality of service, and SD-4 holds the agreements about the Directory schema 📚.

SD-5 is about how a national authority should structure its DIT subtree. It then applies those principles to the naming scheme for the c=CA and c=US parts of the DIT. The NADF's approach is to split a national DIT subtree into two portions. The first is the public name-space, which holds information objects with some kind of public recognition (e.g., states, counties, businesses, etc.). The second is several private name-spaces, each one unilaterally managed by a public provider of Directory services. (SD-12 defines the registry of these providers.) Based on the civil standing of an entity, that entity may opt to list as one or more entries in the public name-space. That is, registration, per se, happens outside of the Directory. This is a big deal, because it lets an entity list itself where others are likely to search 🔍.

SD-6 gives guidelines on how organizations might like to organize their private name-space, and it also talks about how multinationals might choose to list themselves 🌍.

SD-7 covers how the DIT gets mapped onto multiple DMDs. Knowledge maintenance procedures are absent from X.500(88), and products that support X.500(92) are years away 😩. The competitive relationships between North American Directory providers also rule out any chance of a single entity having exclusive management rights to the public name-space. So the NADF plans to manage the public name-space cooperatively, by letting each service provider link from the public name-space into its own private name-space. This information is limited to knowledge references and naming links, and there is little, if any, payload present. SD-9 explains how a central authority (called the CAN) coordinates and disseminates this information. Basically, the CAN publishes a roadmap for North American Public Directory Service 🗺️.

SD-8 describes the agreements reached for the NADF Pilot 🧪.

SD-10 describes the NADF policy toward security and privacy. Attachment 1 of SD-10 contains the "User Bill of Rights for entries and listings in the Public Directory". SD-11, on the other hand, describes the security facilities available in the Directory, and then specifies which mechanisms will be used in the Public Directory service 🔐.

SD-12 provides a registry of ADDMD names in the NADF project 📝.

SD-13 provides a model and general principles for accounting and settlement in the directory 💸.

1.1. Document Availability 📄

Right now, the NADF standing documents are only available in hardcopy and PostScript form. Since they don't exist in ASCII form, the NADF standing documents can not be distributed as informational RFCs. Here are the ways you can get them.

1.1.1. Hardcopy 📮

               Postal: NADF Secretariat
                       c/o Rapport Communication
                       2721 N Street NW
                       Washington, DC 20007
                       US

               Tel:    +1 202 342 2727
               Fax:    +1 202 625 4101

               E-Mail: Ted Myer <4454742@mcimail.com>

1.1.2. Anonymous FTP 🖥️

               host:   ftp.gte.com
               area:   /pub/nadf/nadf-docs
               files:  sd-*.ps
               mode:   ascii

Security Considerations 😱

Security issues are not discussed in this memo. Yes, bestie, this entire memo skips security. So if you're planning anything security-related, go check out SD-10 and SD-11 instead 🙈💀.

Author's Address 💌

   North American Directory Forum
   c/o Theodore H. Myer
   Rapport Communication
   2721 N Street NW
   Washington, DC  20007

   Phone: +1 202-342-2727

   EMail: 0004454742@mcimail.com