[LEAPSECS] Bulletin C and all that

[Rob Seaman]

Hi Tom,

In addition to an interesting systems engineering exercise, it’s great to see this list working together on something :-)  In addition to your kind offer, Tony Finch should be acknowledged for the original IPv6 notion, and PHK for settling most of the pragmatic issues with an IPv4 version and for providing a nice little python script.  Numerous others have commented, all productively - including Clive Feather calling it a “perversion” ;-)

I actually wonder whether any prior experimental project has been anywhere near this appropriate for Class E addresses.

> I own dut1.org if you want to use that for a data service. For the past couple of years it runs a script to return DUT1 values.

Not obvious that “service” is the right word here.  I’m sure many of us own (well, lease) domains for one purpose or another.  This DNS notion is doable even if you never connect the domain to an ISP/host.  I can use the, ahem, “value added” options to redirect traffic, but can also just enter different types of DNS records or upload a zone file (obviously the way to go to auto generate from a list as with the IERS bulletins).

Which is to say that once we settle on an encoding that everybody can agree on we can generate a file that should be straightforward for anybody and everybody to upload.  Presumably there will be issues like the TTL and CNAMEs to sort out, too.  Since these are pseudo mappings it does not matter if bulletin-c.dut1.org points to the same thing as bulletin-c.leapsec.com.  The difference as PHK pointed out is in who the users trust to keep the records up to date.

We’ll need library routines for encoding/decoding and utility purposes for Python, C, etc.  Then we have the conversation about git...  The horse is holding the reins and sitting on top of the cart.

But the point is that dut1.org can continue to point to your script at the same time.  In fact I could redirect leapsec.com to point to dut1.org without affecting the leap-encoded DNS records.

> I also would be willing to give up leapsecond.org for the same purpose (right now it's just a pointer to www.leapsecond.com). I see you own leapsec.org; who owns leapsec.com?

Thanks, but no need to give up anything.  I now own leapsec.com/.org/.net, just since it was a good idea to protect against future confusion (and since they were cheap).  If this turns into something that we hope to encourage others to rely upon we’ll need to establish expected levels of service, a list of responsible parties, and some sort of commitment of future support.  For example I have chatted briefly with Harlan Stenn at the Network Time Foundation.

Rob