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Too bad the NetTopBox is a dead project.

As a consumer I want the cable co to expose an open set of services that lets 3rd parties compete to add value for me.

The NetTopBox project claims to be working on this, but I haven't seen any results yet.

If some other organization wins, VeriSign loses out on $13.8M a year with a possible one-time loss of $5M. That's a big incentive to ensure that UIA wins the contract. Sure, VeriSign still loses some of its revenue ($3.80 per 2.3M equals $8.74M/year), but not all of it. As well, UIA could use some of its now tax-free revenue on VeriSign's behalf.

Whoever wins, I truly hope that it is not UIA. Network Solutions and VeriSign have shaken us down for enough cash already. It's time for someone else -- like the public -- to benefit from the dot-org domain. So far from my very limited reading I favor Internet Multicasting Service simply based on its organization being completely non-profit, public, and open.

How about an interview with Carl Malamud?

The IMS is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit run by Carl Malamud, who was responsible for getting the SEC's EDGAR filings freely available online. There is more info here.

As one of the official supplicants, I naturally read the profiles (and even read the full proposals). So, it was with some bemusement that I noted a continued strain of ".org has to go to a for-profit registry provider because that is the only way the system will be stable."

We posted a few choice words on this subject. The "trust us because we're a .com and will run a stable argument" argument just doesn't wash.

Carl Malamud
Internet Muticasting Service

As one of the official supplicants, I naturally read the profiles (and even read the full proposals). So, it was with some bemusement that I noted a continued strain of ".org has to go to a for-profit registry provider because that is the only way the system will be stable."

We posted a few choice words on this subject. The "trust us because we're a .com and will run a stable argument" argument just doesn't wash.

Carl Malamud
Internet Muticasting Service

Actually, content was the whole point behind the protocol. We were trying to solve a class of problems, all driven by content requirements. Examples are the SEC's EDGAR database, a variety of other "deep wells", and a class of problems ranging from mapping network topology to creating personalized "maps" (views) of the Internet. See here for more on the philosophy behind the content requirements.

The protocol emerged from long discussions about how to solve these content problems. We tried as hard as possible to reuse existing protocol infrastructure, but quickly found that there were no protocols that handled the metadata problems we were trying to attack.

The (IMHO) brilliant thing Marshall did was to build two levels into the solution. BXXP is the general-purpose framework that was used for the Simple Exchange Profile application we were going for in the first place. The nice thing was that BXXP works for a broad range of other applications, such as asynchronous messaging.

The bottom line is why reinvent the wheel more than once?

Carl

IMXP is, as the authors of the IETF draft put it, "extensible, asynchronous message relaying service for application layer programs."

Another way to look at IMXP is a kind of SMTP for instant messaging, except that communication takes place in XML instead of some other format, and instead of handling mail messages, IMXP handles IM requests and responses.

IMXP is implemented as a profile for a new protocol framework called BXXP, or the Blocks eXtensible eXchange Protocol. This protocol framework also uses XML instead of some other format to specify authentication and transport security, as well as the type of data communication profile used between two endpoints.

Here is more information about BXXP.

............ kris

Kris Magnusson
Director, Developer Relations