Network Working Group M.M. Mealling Internet-Draft Network Solutions, Inc. Expires: May 18, 2001 November 17, 2000 A URN Namespace for IANA Registered Protocol Elements draft-mealling-iana-urn-00.txt Status of this Memo This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." To view the entire list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories, see http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html. This Internet-Draft will expire on May 18, 2001. Copyright Notice Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2000). All Rights Reserved. Abstract This document describes a URN namespace for protocol items registered with the Internet Assigned Number Authority (IANA). 1. Introduction The Internet Assigned Number Authority (IANA) acts as the central repository for the various pieces of protocols that need to be available for reference. The IANA several lists of items such as all assigned port numbers, MIME media types, enterprise numbers, etc. Over time there has developed a need to be able to reference these elements in various schema. In the past this was done in a very adhoc way that easily led to interoperability problems. This document specifies the "IANA" URN namespace[1] which acts as a standardized mechanism for naming the elements in the IANA repository. Mealling Expires May 18, 2001 [Page 1] Internet-Draft IANA URN Namespace November 2000 The namespace specification is for a formal namespace. 2. Specification Template Namespace ID: "iana" requested. Registration Information: Registration Version Number: 1 Registration Date: 2000-08-3 Declared registrant of the namespace: The Internet Assigned Number Authority Declaration of structure: The namespace is primarily opaque. The IANA may take suggestions for names to assign but they reserve the right to assign whatever name they desire. The colon character (":") is used to denote a limited concept of hierarchy. If a colon is present then the items on both sides of it are valid names. In general, if a name has a colon then the item on the left hand side represents a class of those items that would contain other items of that class. For example, a name can be assigned to the entire list of DNS resource record type codes as well as for each individual code. The URN for the list might look like this: urn:iana:rr-type-codes while the URN for the SOA records type code might look like this: urn:iana:rr-type-codes:soa Relevant ancillary documentation: None. Identifier uniqueness considerations: The IANA has sole discretion for assigning names and thus can gaurantee uniqueness by comparing the name to be assigned with the list of previously assigned names. Identifier persistence considerations: The IANA has sole discretion for assigning names and thus can gaurantee uniqueness by comparing the name to be assigned with the list of previously assigned names. Process of identifier assignment: Identifiers are assigned only after a particular protocol element or number has been registered with the IANA using standard policies and procedures. Once that element is assigned and in the repository, the IANA will take requests for that element to have a name assigned. The assignment request can suggest a name to use but the IANA may ignore that request. See Section 6 for the assignment request template. Process of identifier resolution: Mealling Expires May 18, 2001 [Page 2] Internet-Draft IANA URN Namespace November 2000 At this time no resolution mechanism is defined though one is expected. Rules for Lexical Equivalence: Lexical equivalence is achieved by exact string match. Conformance with URN Syntax: There are no additional characters reserved. Validation mechanism: None. Scope: Global 3. Examples These are examples only. As of the publication of this document no names have been created for this namespace, thus these examples will most likely be wrong and should never be used. urn:iana:rr-type-code:naptr This URN would name the type code for the NAPTR DNS resource record which is 35. urn:iana:mime-media-types This URN would name the entire class of MIME media types. urn:iana:mime-media-types:application-xml This URN would name specific media type known as "application/xml". Note how the actual URN does not contain the "/" character since it is disallowed by RFC 2141. 4. Security Considerations None not already inherent to using URNs. 5. Acknowledgements The author would like to thank Joyce Reynolds and Graham Klyne for their input to this document. 6. Assignment Request Template References [1] Moats, R., "URN Syntax", RFC 2141, May 1997. Mealling Expires May 18, 2001 [Page 3] Internet-Draft IANA URN Namespace November 2000 Author's Address Michael Mealling Network Solutions, Inc. 505 Huntmar Park Drive Herndon, VA 22070 US Phone: +1 770 921 2251 EMail: michaelm@netsol.com URI: http://www.netsol.com Mealling Expires May 18, 2001 [Page 4] Internet-Draft IANA URN Namespace November 2000 Full Copyright Statement Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2000). All Rights Reserved. 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