Call for Participation
IAB workshop on Explicit Internet Naming Systems
Internet namespaces relyon Internet connected systems sharing a common
set of assumptions on the scope, method of resolution, and uniqueness of
the names. That set of assumption allowed the creation of URIs and
other systems which presumed that you could authoritatively identify a
service using an Internet name, a service port, and a set of
locally-significant path elements.
There are now multiple challenges to maintaining that commonality of
understanding.
* Some naming systems wish to use URIs to identify both a service and
the method of resolution used to map the name to a serving node.
Because there is no common facility for varying the resolution
method in the URI structure, those naming systems must either mint
new URI schemes for each resolution service or infer the resolution
method from a reserved name or pattern. Both methods are currently
difficult and costly, and the effort thus scales poorly.
* Users’ intentions to refer to specific names are now often expressed
in voice input, gestures, and other methods which must be
interpreted before being put into practice. The systems which carry
on that interpretation often infer which intent a user is
expressing, and thus what name is meant, by contextual elements.
Those systems are linked to existing systems who have no access to
that context and which may thus return results or create security
expectations for an unintended name.
* Unicode allows for both combining characters and composed characters
when local language communities have different practices. When
these do not have a single normalization, context is required to
determine which to produce or assume in resolution. How can this
context be maintained in Internet systems?
While any of these challenges could easily be the topic of a stand-alone
effort, this workshop seeks to explore whether there is a common set of
root problems in the explicitness of the resolution context, heuristic
derivation of intent, or language matching. If so, it seeks to identify
promising areas for the development of new, more explicit naming systems
for the Internet.
We invite position papers on this topic to be submitted by July 28, 2017
toename(_at_)iab(_dot_)org <mailto:ename(_at_)iab(_dot_)org>. Decisions on accepted
submissions will be made by August 11, 2017.
Proposed dates for the workshop are September 28th and 29th, 2017 and
the proposed location is in the Pacific North West of North America.
Finalized logistics will be announced prior to the deadline for
submissions.
Ted Hardie
for the IAB