Addition of organisation prefix to RFC6690 IANA CoRE parameters registration

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Table of Contents

1. Requirements Language

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].¶

2. Introduction

[RFC6690] "Constrained RESTful Environments (CoRE) Link Format" defines the Resource Type 'rt' and Interface Description 'if' link attributes. In order to co-ordinate the use of these attributes, sections 7.4 and 7.5/[RFC6690] establish IANA registries to register link attribute values for 'rt' and 'if'.¶

In order to register a new 'rt' and 'if' link attribute value the [RFC5226] "Specification Required" process is followed for each value. As part of the process a designated expert will examine the specification to enforce a number of requirements including:¶

• Registration values MUST be related to the intended purpose of these attributes as described in Section 3/[RFC6690].¶
• Registered values MUST conform to the ABNF reg-rel-type definition of Section 2/[RFC6690], meaning that the value starts with a lowercase alphabetic character, followed by a sequence of lowercase alphabetic, numeric, ".", or "-" characters, and contains no white space.¶
• It is recommended that the period "." character be used for dividing name segments and that the dash "-" character be used for making a segment more readable. Example Interface Description values might be "core.batch" and "core.link-batch".¶
• URIs are reserved for free use as extension values for these attributes and MUST NOT be registered.¶

The IANA CoRE resource type and interface description registry can be found at: IANA CoRE Registry.¶

Given the scope of the Internet of Things (IoT) the potential number of resource types (and to a lesser extent interface types) is potentially quite large. This would lead to a large number of requests for designated expert review. It would also mean additional work for the IANA to process each request.¶

The current trend for the definition of resource types and interface descriptions is that a few standards organisations have defined a large number of values.¶

For example the "OIC Resource Type Specification v1.1.0" [OICResSpec] contains 64 resource types.¶

ETSI oneM2M also defines a large number of resource types. For example is "Home Appliances Information Model and Mapping" [oneM2MTS0023].¶

The Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) also make use of resources types.¶

The above three organisations also have their own registry and procedures for adding resource types. Trying to keep the IANA registry aligned with the individual organisation registries would also add additional burden.¶

A significant amount of work could be saved by allowing organisations to register a prefix under which they can administer their own resources negating the need for the IANA and the designated IANA expert to be involved for each resource registration.¶

There were discussions ath the IETF#97 meeting in Seoul about how to tackle this issue. There were broadly two camps in the discussion:¶

1 - Prefixes are a bad idea as they discourage people from resource re-use and create little "kingdoms".¶

2 - Prefixes are OK. They've been used before and people will coalesce on a common set eventually.¶

Clearly some sort of middle ground is needed to move forward.¶

Clearly resource re-use is a valid goal. It order for this to occur organisations/people requesting a new resource type would need to consider the existing resource types and see if it is applicable to them. Presumably if they can't use an existing type then they must have a reason why? One approach could be to introduce a new step into the registration process where the requester must specify any similar resources and why they cannot be used. This does of course add extra burden on the requester to document it and extra burden on the expert to evaluate it. Then there is the issue of what suffices for the analysis and what are the criteria for the expert to accept it? This may not result in reduced registrations but instead create more workload for registrations.¶

Currently all the rt registrations have been from standards organisations not individuals. The process for registration needs to be simple enough that people/companies have a incentive to register than rather than simply use and squat on a name without registering it.¶

It does have to be noted that today there is nothing stopping people/organisations from duplicating resources in their registration. An organisational prefix would not make this worse.¶

Editor's note: Interface descriptions should be considered¶

This specification updates the [RFC6690] IANA registration procedures to allow the possibility to register a pre-fix.¶

3. Organisation Prefix

As indicated by [RFC6690] registered values MUST conform to the ABNF reg-rel-type definition, meaning that the value starts with a lowercase alphabetic character. Therefore an organisation registering a prefix MUST register a lowercase alphabetic sequence of characters. It MUST be followed by a ".".¶

For example: "foo."¶

This will allocate the namespace "foo." to the organisation. The organisation will then be responsible for maintaining resources within this name space.¶

E.g. "foo.sensor", "foo.actuator" could be allocated without requiring registration with IANA.¶

4. Security Considerations

This specification updates the [RFC6690] IANA Considerations. No additional protocol security impacts to what is already described in [RFC6690] are foreseen.¶

The use of organisational prefixes introducing the possibility that people request prefixes for an organisation that they do not represent. The IANA considerations in this specification require that the designated expert determine if the person requesting a prefix represents the organisation related to the prefix.¶

5. IANA Considerations

6. Acknowledgements

TBD¶

7. Changelog

draft-groves-core-rfc6690up-01:¶

• Keepalive update. No changes.¶

Authors' Addresses