Network Working Group M.M. Mealling
Internet-Draft Network Solutions, Inc.
Expires: September 30, 2000 April 2000
A URN Namespace of Object Identifiers
draft-mealling-oid-urn-02.txt
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Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2000). All Rights Reserved.
Abstract
This document describes a 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 discrection 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.
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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.
Registration Information:
Registration Version Number: 1
Registration Date: 2000-04-30
Declared registrant of the namespace:
The ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1 - SubCommittee 6
The real authority is the ASN.1 specification itself but SC6
is the committee that has the authority to interpret what that
means, thus that committee is listed as the registrant.
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 seperated 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:
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
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Process of identifier resolution:
At this time no resolution mechanism is defined.
Rules for Lexical Equivalence:
OIDs are composed of multiple occurences 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
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.
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Author's Address
Michael Mealling
Network Solutions, Inc.
505 Huntmar Park Drive
Herndon, VA 22070
US
Phone: +1 770 935 5492
EMail: michaelm@netsol.com
URI: http://www.netsol.com
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