Network Working Group                                        M. Mealling
Request for Comments: 3001                       Network Solutions, Inc.
Category: Informational                                    November 2000


                A URN Namespace of Object Identifiers

Status of this Memo

  This memo provides information for the Internet community.  It does
  not specify an Internet standard of any kind.  Distribution of this
  memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

  Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2000).  All Rights Reserved.

Abstract

  This document describes a Uniform Resource Names (URN) namespace that
  contains Object Identifiers (OIDs).

1. Introduction

  An Object Identifier is a series of digits delimited in some way.
  The rules roughly state that once an entity is assigned an Object
  Identifier (OID) it has sole discretion to further subdelegate off of
  that OID.  Some examples of OIDs include:

  o  1.3.6.1 - the Internet OID
  o  1.3.6.1.4.1 - IANA-assigned company OIDs, used for private MIBs
     and such things
  o  1.3.6.1.2.1.27 - The Applications MIB
  o  0.9.2342.19200300.100.4 - Object ID's used in the directory pilot
     project to identify X.500 Object Classes.  Mostly defined in RFC-
     1274.

  This document specifies the "oid" URN namespace [1].  This namespace
  is for encoding an Object Identifier as specified in ASN.1 [2] as a
  URI.

  The namespace specification is for a formal namespace.

2. Specification Template

  Namespace ID:

     "oid" requested.



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  Registration Information:

     Registration Version Number: 1
     Registration Date: 2000-04-30

  Declared registrant of the namespace:

     I need help here.  I'm not comfortable being the 'registrant'.  So
     who do I actually put here?

     The ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1 - SubCommittee 6 The
     actual real authority is the ASN.1 specification itself but at
     present SC6 is the committee that has the authority to interpret
     what that means.

  Declaration of structure:

     The NSS portion of the identifier follows the string encoding
     rules found in RFC 1778 Section 2.15 [3] which specifies a series
     of digits separated by a period with the most significant digit
     being at the left and the least significant being at the right.

     No changes are anticipated since Object Identifiers are fairly
     simple and have been standardized with no changes for many years.

  Relevant ancillary documentation:

     Relevant documentation can be found in X.660/Amd 2 | ISO/IEC
     9834-1/Amd 2 [2].

  Identifier uniqueness considerations:

     The rules for assignment of OIDs requires that each OID be unique
     to the OID space and that it cannot be reassigned or reused.  By
     reference this URN namespace inherents those rules.

  Identifier persistence considerations:

     The rules concerning the use of OIDs requires that they not be
     reused once assigned.  By reference this URN namespace inherents
     those rules.

  Process of identifier assignment:

     Once an OID is assigned to some entity, that entity can then
     create and assign new OIDs below that particular OID.  There are
     multiple entities that assign new OIDs to the general public.  The
     top three levels are pre-assigned as follows:



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        0 - ITU-T assigned
        1 - ISO assigned
        2 - Joint ISO/ITU-T assignment

     several assigned OIDs that are of importance to the Internet are:

        1.3.6.1 - the Internet OID
        1.3.6.1.4.1 - IANA-assigned company OIDs, used for private
                      MIBs and such things

  Process of identifier resolution:

     At this time no resolution mechanism is defined.

  Rules for Lexical Equivalence:

     OIDs are composed of multiple occurrences of digits and the "."
     character.  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

  The following examples are taken from the example OIDs from the
  Introduction:

     urn:oid:1.3.6.1
     urn:oid:1.3.6.1.4.1
     urn:oid:1.3.6.1.2.1.27
     URN:OID:0.9.2342.19200300.100.4

4. Security Considerations

  None not already inherent to using unverifiable OIDs







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5. Acknowledgements

  The author would like to thank Harald Alvestrand for the use of his
  OID database as a source for examples and references.

References

  [1]  Moats, R., "URN Syntax", RFC 2141, May 1997.

  [2]  CCITT, "Specification of Basic Encoding Rules for Abstract
       Syntax Notation One (ASN.1)", CCITT Recommendation X.209,
       January 1988.

  [3]  Howes, T., Kille, S., Yeong, W. and C. Robbins, "The String
       Representation of Standard Attribute Syntaxes", RFC 1778, March
       1995.

Author's Address

  Michael Mealling
  Network Solutions, Inc.
  505 Huntmar Park Drive
  Herndon, VA  22070
  US

  Phone: +1 770 935 5492
  EMail: [email protected]
  URI:   http://www.netsol.com























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Acknowledgement

  Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the
  Internet Society.



















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