A URN Namespace for IETF Documents
RFC 2648

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Network Working Group                                           R. Moats
Request for Comments: 2648                                          AT&T
Category: Informational                                      August 1999

                   A URN Namespace for IETF Documents

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 (1999).  All Rights Reserved.

Abstract

   A system for Uniform Resource Names (URNs) must be capable of
   supporting new naming systems.  As an example of proposing a new
   namespace, this document proposes the "ietf" namespace.  This
   namespace consists of the RFC family of documents (RFCs, STDs, FYIs,
   and BCPs) developed by the IETF and published by the RFC Editor, the
   minutes of working groups (WG) and birds of a feather (BOF) meetings
   that occur during IETF conferences, and the Internet Drafts published
   by the Internet Drafts Editor.  Both the current URN framework and
   URN syntax support this namespace.

1. Introduction

   This document proposes the "ietf" namespace, which consists of the
   RFC family of documents (RFCs, STDs, FYIs, and BCPs) developed by the
   IETF and published by the RFC editor and the minutes of working
   groups (WG) and birds of a feather (BOF) meetings that occur during
   IETF conferences.

   The namespace specification is for a formal namespace.

2. Specification Template

      Namespace ID:

            "ietf" requested.

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RFC 2648           A URN Namespace for IETF Documents        August 1999

      Registration Information:

            Registration version number: 1
            Registration date: 1999-04-22

      Declared registrant of the namespace:

            Ryan Moats
            jayhawk@att.com
            AT&T
            15621 Drexel Circle
            Omaha, NE 68135-2358

      Declaration of structure:

            The identifier has the following ABNF [2] specification:

            NSS = rfc-nss / fyi-nss / std-nss / bcp-nss /
                  draft-nss / mtg-nss / other-nss

            rfc-nss = "rfc:" 1*DIGIT
            fyi-nss = "fyi:" 1*DIGIT
            std-nss = "std:" 1*DIGIT
            bcp-nss = "bcp:" 1*DIGIT
            draft-nss = "id:" string
            mtg-nss = "mtg:" string
            other-nss = string
              ; beginning with a prefix other than one of those
              ; above for future expansion

            string = 1*(DIGIT / ALPHA / "-")

            If the IESG (or it successor) adds a new document series,
            this ABNF specification will need to be updated.  Further,
            if a working group or BOF is created that used characters
            outside the range of this ABNF specification, this
            specification will need to be updated.  Any system intended
            to resolve names for this namespace should be written with
            the awareness that this could occur at any time.

      Relevant ancillary documentation:

            Relevant documentation is in RFC 2648.

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RFC 2648           A URN Namespace for IETF Documents        August 1999

      Identifier uniqueness considerations:

            Because the rfc-editor assigns the RFC number uniquely these
            URNs are unique.  Since the mapping between RFCs and other
            rfc-editor document series (STDs, FYIs or BCPs) is not
            necessarily one-to-one, uniqueness of STDs, FYIs and BCPs
            are defined based on the document mappings maintained by the
            RFC Editor (the index files "rfc-index.txt", "fyi-
            index.txt", "bcp-index.txt", "std-index.txt") are defined to
            be the definitive statement of the assignment of RFC Family
            URNs in this namespace.  The meeting minutes portion of the
            namespace is guaranteed unique because the URN includes the
            sequence number of the IETF conference.  The document
            mapping maintained by the Internet Drafts editor ("1id-
            abstracts.txt") is defined as the definitive statement of
            the assignment of URNs for the internet draft portion of
            this namespace.

      Identifier persistence considerations:

            Persistence of the URNs of this namespace is independent of
            the mutability of the underlying documents.  A URN once
            assigned will never be reassigned to a different resource;
            the assignment is persistent and immutable.  Immutability of
            RFCs, STDs, FYIs and BCPs is at the discretion of the RFC
            Editor.  They may be composites of one or more RFCs and the
            set of RFCs that includes them may change with time.  It is