Network Working Group M. Mealling Request for Comments: 3061 Verisign Category: Informational February 2001 Obsoletes: 3001
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 (2001). All Rights Reserved.
Abstract
This document describes a Uniform Resource Name (URN) namespace that contains Object Identifiers (OIDs). It obsoletes RFC 3001.
An Object Identifier is a tree of nodes where each node is simply a sequence of digits. The rules roughly state that once an entity is assigned a node in the Object Identifier (OID) tree, it has sole discretion to further subdelegate sub-trees off of that node. 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 [2]. This namespace is for encoding an Object Identifier as specified in ASN.1 [3] as a URI. RFC 3001 [1] is obsoleted by this specification.
The namespace specification is for a formal namespace.
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 is based on the string encoding rules found in RFC 1778 Section 2.15 [4] 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. At no time shall the NSS portion of the URN contain the human readable description of a particular node in the OID tree. The NSS portion of the name is strictly limited to the digits 0-9 and the '.' character with no leading zeros. No other characters are permitted. This is all expressed in the following ABNF:
oid = number *( DOT number ) number = DIGIT / ( LEADDIGIT 1*DIGIT ) LEADDIGIT = %x31-39 ; 1-9 DIGIT = %x30 / LEADDIGIT ; 0-9 DOT = %x2E ; period
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[3].
Mealling Informational [Page 2]
RFC 3061 OID URN Namespace February 2001
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:
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2001). All Rights Reserved.
This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are included on all such copies and derivative works. However, this document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than English.
The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.
This document and the information contained herein is provided on an "AS IS" basis and THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Acknowledgement
Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the Internet Society.