The 92nd meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) was held in Dallas, the US on March 26, 2015, at which three documents on the Registration Data Access Protocol (RDAP) that CNNIC experts participated in formulating were officially launched as RFC 7480, RFC 7481 and RFC 7485 respectively. RFC 7480 and RFC 7481 are the first proposed standards related to basic protocols of Internet domain names that have been formulated with the participation of Chinese technical experts. The launch of these standards indicates that the WHOIS service, whose basic function is inquiring the registration information on global Internet domain names and IP addresses, will march into a new era. It will provide global netizens with more convenient and safer WHOIS service.

Formulated and launched by IETF in 2004, the current WHOIS protocol (RFC 3912) is a critical protocol for inquiring registration information on Internet domain names and IP addresses. Given its lack of internationalization support mechanism, data extension mechanism and privacy protection mechanism, CNNIC worked with international organizations such as ICANN and Verisign and formed a working group in May 2012 to promote the formulation of RDAP. As an member of the design team of the working group, Doctor Kong Ning, a technical expert from CNNIC, cooperated with other technical experts for three years and formulated the standards. Among them, RFC 7485 was formulated with CNNIC’s technical expert Zhou Linlin as chief author, and the proposed standards RFC 7480 and RFC 7481 were co-authored by Doctor Kong Ning and other international technical experts. Once issued, this type of international standards will be extensively endorsed by and applied in the industry.
　　
CNNIC has been committed to formulating international standards for critical Internet resources. The three IETF RFCs that it participated in formulating this time is another breakthrough in international technical standards governing the basic protocol of Internet domain names after the standards for internationalized domain names and email address internationalization. So far CNNIC has participated in formulating 10 IETF RFCs. Meanwhile, it has also taken an active part in technical R&D globally in critical Internet resources. In October 2012, it won the bid from ICANN for the open source reference implementation project of the RESTful-based RDAP. With the launch of the international standard for RDAP, the open-source software RDAP system developed by CNNIC will become crucial basic software in the global Internet domain name industry. According to CNNIC Director Li Xiaodong, the fact that Chinese technical experts participate deeply in formulating international Internet standards will strongly push China’s development of safe and reliable next-generation Internet. It will enable the Chinese Internet domain name industry to take the initiative when entering the New gTLD era, and it is also of positive meaning for enhancing China’s influence in the international Internet community.

Appendix:
RFC7480 (HTTP Usage in the Registration Data Access Protocol [RDAP])
https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7480

RFC7481 (Security Services for the Registration Data Access Protocol [RDAP])
https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7481

RFC7485 (Inventory and Analysis of WHOIS Registration Objects)
https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7485