Network Working Group A.L. Newton Internet-Draft ARIN Intended status: Standards Track S. Hollenbeck Expires: October 03, 2013 Verisign Labs April 01, 2013 Registration Data Access Protocol Lookup Format draft-ietf-weirds-rdap-query-04 Abstract This document describes uniform patterns to construct HTTP URLs that may be used to retrieve registration information from registries (including both Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) and Domain Name Registries (DNRs)) using "RESTful" web access patterns. Status of This Memo This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet- Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." This Internet-Draft will expire on October 03, 2013. Copyright Notice Copyright (c) 2013 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved. This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License. Newton & Hollenbeck Expires October 03, 2013 [Page 1] Internet-Draft RDAP Query Format April 2013 Table of Contents 1. Conventions Used in This Document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 1.1. Acronyms and Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 2. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 3. Path Segment Specification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 3.1. IP Network Path Segment Specification . . . . . . . . . . 4 3.2. Autonomous System Path Segment Specification . . . . . . 5 3.3. Domain Path Segment Specification . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 3.4. Name Server Path Segment Specification . . . . . . . . . 6 3.5. Entity Path Segment Specification . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 4. Extensibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 5. Internationalization Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 6. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 7. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 8. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 9. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 9.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 9.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Appendix A. Path Segment Specification for Search Queries . . . 10 Appendix B. Change Log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 1. Conventions Used in This Document The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [RFC2119]. 1.1. Acronyms and Abbreviations IDN: Internationalized Domain Name IDNA: Internationalized Domain Names in Applications DNR: Domain Name Registry RDAP: Registration Data Access Protocol REST: Representational State Transfer State Transfer. The term was first described in a doctoral dissertation [REST]. RESTful: an adjective that describes a service using HTTP and the principles of REST. RIR: Regional Internet Registry 2. Introduction This document describes a specification for querying registration data using a RESTful web service and uniform query patterns. The service is implemented using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) [RFC2616]. Newton & Hollenbeck Expires October 03, 2013 [Page 2] Internet-Draft RDAP Query Format April 2013 The protocol described in this specification is intended to address deficiencies with the WHOIS protocol [RFC3912] that have been identified over time, including: o Lack of standardized command structures, o lack of standardized output and error structures, o lack of support for internationalization and localization, and o lack of support for user identification, authentication, and access control. The patterns described in this document purposefully do not encompass all of the methods employed in the WHOIS and RESTful web services of all of the RIRs and DNRs. The intent of the patterns described here are to enable lookups of: o networks by IP address, o autonomous system numbers by number, o reverse DNS meta-data by domain, o name servers by name, o registrars by name, and o entities (such as contacts) by identifier. It is envisioned that each registry will continue to maintain NICNAME /WHOIS and/or RESTful web services specific to their needs and those of their constituencies, and the information retrieved through the patterns described here may reference such services. Likewise, future IETF standards may add additional patterns for additional query types (for example, "/domains" for a domain search query). And Section 4 defines a simple pattern namespacing scheme to accomodate custom extensions that will not interfere with the patterns defined in this document or patterns defined in future IETF standards. WHOIS services, in general, are read-only services. Therefore URL [RFC3986] patterns specified in this document are only applicable to the HTTP [RFC2616] GET and HEAD methods. This document does not describe the results or entities returned from issuing the described URLs with an HTTP GET. It is envisioned that other documents will describe these entities in various serialization formats, such as JavaScript Object Notation (JSON, [RFC4627]). Additionally, resource management, provisioning and update functions are out of scope for this document. Registries have various and divergent methods covering these functions, and it is unlikely a uniform approach for these functions will ever be possible. Newton & Hollenbeck Expires October 03, 2013 [Page 3] Internet-Draft RDAP Query Format April 2013 HTTP contains mechanisms for servers to authenticate clients and for clients to authenticate servers (from which authorization schemes may be built) so such mechanisms are not described in this document. Policy, provisioning, and processing of authentication and authorization are out-of-scope for this document as deployments will have to make choices based on local criteria. Specified authentication mechanisms MUST use HTTP. 3. Path Segment Specification The uniform patterns start with a base URL [RFC3986] specified by each registry or any other service provider offering this service. The base URL is followed by a resource-type-specific path segment. The base URL may contain its own path segments (e.g. http:// example.com/... or http://example.com/restful-WHOIS/... ). The characters used to form a path segment are limited to those that can be used to form a URI as specified in RFC 3986 [RFC3986]. The resource type path segments are: o 'ip': IP networks and associated data referenced using either an IPv4 or IPv6 address. o 'autnum': Autonomous system registrations and associated data referenced using an AS Plain autonomous system number. o 'domain': Reverse DNS (RIR) or domain name (DNR) information and associated data referenced using a fully-qualified domain name. o 'nameserver': Used to identify a name server information query. o 'entity': Used to identify an entity information query. 3.1. IP Network Path Segment Specification Syntax: ip/ or ip// Queries for information about IP networks are of the form /ip/XXX/... or /ip/XXX/YY/... where the path segment following 'ip' is either an IPv4 [RFC1166] or IPv6 [RFC5952] address (i.e. XXX) or an IPv4 or IPv6 CIDR [RFC4632] notation address block (i.e. XXX/YY). Semantically, the simpler form using the address can be thought of as a CIDR block with a bitmask length of 32 for IPv4 and a bitmask length of 128 for IPv6. A given specific address or CIDR may fall within multiple IP networks in a hierarchy of networks, therefore this query targets the "most-specific" or smallest IP network which completely encompasses it in a hierarchy of IP networks. The IPv4 and IPv6 address formats supported in this query are described in section 3.2.2 of [RFC3986], as IPv4address and IPv6address ABNF definitions. Any valid IPv6 text address format [RFC4291] can be used, compressed or not compressed. The restricted Newton & Hollenbeck Expires October 03, 2013 [Page 4] Internet-Draft RDAP Query Format April 2013 rules to write a text representation of an IPv6 address [RFC5952] are not mandatory. However, the zone id [RFC4007] is not appropriate in this context and therefore prohibited. This is an example URL for the most specific network containing 192.0.2.0: /ip/192.0.2.0 This is an example of a URL the most specific network containing 192.0.2.0/24: /ip/192.0.2.0/24 This is an example URL for the most specific network containing 2001:db8:1:1::1: /ip/2001:db8:1:1::1 3.2. Autonomous System Path Segment Specification Syntax: autnum/ Queries for information regarding autonomous system number registrations are of the form /autnum/XXX/... where XXX is an asplain autonomous system number [RFC5396]. In some registries, registration of autonomous system numbers is done on an individual number basis, while other registries may register blocks of autonomous system numbers. The semantics of this query are such that if a number falls within a range of registered blocks, the target of the query is the block registration, and that individual number registrations are considered a block of numbers with a size of 1. For example, to find information on autonomous system number 65551, the following path would be used: /autnum/65551 The following path would be used to find information on 4-byte autonomous system number 65538: /autnum/65538 Newton & Hollenbeck Expires October 03, 2013 [Page 5] Internet-Draft RDAP Query Format April 2013 3.3. Domain Path Segment Specification Syntax: domain/ Queries for domain information are of the form /domain/XXXX/..., where XXXX is a fully-qualified domain name [RFC4343] in either the in-addr.arpa or ip6.arpa zones (for RIRs) or a fully-qualified domain name in a zone administered by the server operator (for DNRs). Internationalized domain names represented in either A-label or U-label format [RFC5890] are also valid domain names. IDN labels SHOULD NOT be represented as a mixture of A-labels and U-labels. If the client sends the server an IDN in U-label format, servers that support IDNs MUST convert the IDN into A-label format and perform IDNA processing as specified in RFC 5891 [RFC5891]. The server should perform an exact match lookup using the A-label. The following path would be used to find information describing the zone serving the network 192.0.2/24: /domain/2.0.192.in-addr.arpa The following path would be used to find information describing the zone serving the network 2001:db8:1::/48: /domain/1.0.0.0.8.b.d.0.1.0.0.2.ip6.arpa The following path would be used to find information for the example.com domain name: /domain/example.com The following path would be used to find information for the xn--xemple-9ua.example IDN: /domain/xn--xemple-9ua.example 3.4. Name Server Path Segment Specification Syntax: nameserver/ The parameter represents a fully qualified name as specified in RFC 952 [RFC0952] and RFC 1123 [RFC1123]. Internationalized names represented in either A-label or U-label format [RFC5890] are also valid name server names. IDN labels SHOULD NOT be represented as a mixture of A-labels and U-labels. Newton & Hollenbeck Expires October 03, 2013 [Page 6] Internet-Draft RDAP Query Format April 2013 If the client sends the server an IDN in U-label format, servers that support IDNs MUST convert the IDN into A-label format and perform IDNA processing as specified in RFC 5891 [RFC5891]. The server should perform an exact match lookup using the A-label. The following path would be used to find information for the ns1.example.com name server: /nameserver/ns1.example.com The following path would be used to find information for the ns1.xn--xemple-9ua.example name server: /nameserver/ns1.xn--xemple-9ua.example 3.5. Entity Path Segment Specification Syntax: entity/ The parameter represents an entity (such as a contact, registrant, or registrar) identifier. For example, for some DNRs contact identifiers are specified in RFC 5730 [RFC5730] and RFC 5733 [RFC5733]. The following path would be used to find information for the entity associated with handle CID-4005: /entity/CID-4005 4. Extensibility This document describes path segment specifications for a limited number of objects commonly registered in both RIRs and DNRs. It does not attempt to describe path segments for all of the objects registered in all registries. Custom path segments can be created for objects not specified here using the process described in Section TBD of "Using HTTP for RESTful Whois Services by Internet Registries" [I-D.ietf-weirds-using-http]. Custom path segments can be created by prefixing the segment with a unique identifier followed by an underscore character (0x5F). For example, a custom entity path segment could be created by prefixing "entity" with "custom_", producing "custom_entity". Servers MUST return an appropriate failure status code for a request with an unrecognized path segment. 5. Internationalization Considerations Newton & Hollenbeck Expires October 03, 2013 [Page 7] Internet-Draft RDAP Query Format April 2013 There is value in supporting the ability to submit either a U-label (Unicode form of an IDN label) or an A-label (ASCII form of an IDN label) as a query argument to an RDAP service. Clients capable of processing non-ASCII characters may prefer a U-label since this is more visually recognizable and familiar than A-label strings, but clients using programmatic interfaces might find it easier to submit and display A-labels if they are unable to input U-labels with their keyboard configuration. Both query forms are acceptable. Internationalized domain and name server names can contain character variants and variant labels as described in RFC 4290 [RFC4290]. Clients that support queries for internationalized domain and name server names MUST accept service provider responses that describe variants as specified in "JSON Responses for the Registration Data Access Protocol" [I-D.ietf-weirds-json-response]. 6. IANA Considerations This document does not specify any IANA actions. 7. Security Considerations Security services for the operations specified in this document are described in "Security Services for the Registration Data Access Protocol" [I-D.ietf-weirds-rdap-sec]. As we identify specific use cases for which security services are needed they will be described here. 8. Acknowledgements This document is derived from original work on RIR query formats developed by Byron J. Ellacott of APNIC, Arturo L. Servin of LACNIC, Kaveh Ranjbar of the RIPE NCC, and Andrew L. Newton of ARIN. Additionally, this document incorporates DNR query formats originally described by Francisco Arias and Steve Sheng of ICANN and Scott Hollenbeck of Verisign. The authors would like to acknowledge the following individuals for their contributions to this document: Francisco Arias, Marc Blanchet, Jean-Philippe Dionne, Behnam Esfahbod, Edward Lewis, and John Levine. 9. References Newton & Hollenbeck Expires October 03, 2013 [Page 8] Internet-Draft RDAP Query Format April 2013 9.1. Normative References [I-D.ietf-weirds-json-response] Newton, A. and S. Hollenbeck, "JSON Responses for the Registration Data Access Protocol (RDAP)", draft-ietf- weirds-json-response-02 (work in progress), January 2013. [I-D.ietf-weirds-rdap-sec] Hollenbeck, S. and N. Kong, "Security Services for the Registration Data Access Protocol", draft-ietf-weirds- rdap-sec-01 (work in progress), November 2012. [I-D.ietf-weirds-using-http] Newton, A., Ellacott, B., and N. Kong, "Using the Registration Data Access Protocol (RDAP) with HTTP", draft-ietf-weirds-using-http-03 (work in progress), March 2013. [RFC0952] Harrenstien, K., Stahl, M., and E. Feinler, "DoD Internet host table specification", RFC 952, October 1985. [RFC1123] Braden, R., "Requirements for Internet Hosts - Application and Support", STD 3, RFC 1123, October 1989. [RFC1166] Kirkpatrick, S., Stahl, M., and M. Recker, "Internet numbers", RFC 1166, July 1990. [RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997. [RFC2616] Fielding, R., Gettys, J., Mogul, J., Frystyk, H., Masinter, L., Leach, P., and T. Berners-Lee, "Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1", RFC 2616, June 1999. [RFC3986] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and L. Masinter, "Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax", STD 66, RFC 3986, January 2005. [RFC4290] Klensin, J., "Suggested Practices for Registration of Internationalized Domain Names (IDN)", RFC 4290, December 2005. [RFC4291] Hinden, R. and S. Deering, "IP Version 6 Addressing Architecture", RFC 4291, February 2006. [RFC4343] Eastlake, D., "Domain Name System (DNS) Case Insensitivity Clarification", RFC 4343, January 2006. Newton & Hollenbeck Expires October 03, 2013 [Page 9] Internet-Draft RDAP Query Format April 2013 [RFC4632] Fuller, V. and T. Li, "Classless Inter-domain Routing (CIDR): The Internet Address Assignment and Aggregation Plan", BCP 122, RFC 4632, August 2006. [RFC5396] Huston, G. and G. Michaelson, "Textual Representation of Autonomous System (AS) Numbers", RFC 5396, December 2008. [RFC5730] Hollenbeck, S., "Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP)", STD 69, RFC 5730, August 2009. [RFC5733] Hollenbeck, S., "Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP) Contact Mapping", STD 69, RFC 5733, August 2009. [RFC5890] Klensin, J., "Internationalized Domain Names for Applications (IDNA): Definitions and Document Framework", RFC 5890, August 2010. [RFC5891] Klensin, J., "Internationalized Domain Names in Applications (IDNA): Protocol", RFC 5891, August 2010. [RFC5952] Kawamura, S. and M. Kawashima, "A Recommendation for IPv6 Address Text Representation", RFC 5952, August 2010. 9.2. Informative References [REST] Fielding, R. and R. Taylor, "Principled Design of the Modern Web Architecture", ACM Transactions on Internet Technology Vol. 2, No. 2, May 2002. [RFC3912] Daigle, L., "WHOIS Protocol Specification", RFC 3912, September 2004. [RFC4007] Deering, S., Haberman, B., Jinmei, T., Nordmark, E., and B. Zill, "IPv6 Scoped Address Architecture", RFC 4007, March 2005. [RFC4627] Crockford, D., "The application/json Media Type for JavaScript Object Notation (JSON)", RFC 4627, July 2006. Appendix A. Path Segment Specification for Search Queries All of the path segments described in this document identify patterns for exact-match lookups of data elements. We have explicitly omitted specifications for search queries in the interest of first focusing on more basic protocol operations. Once we understand how exact- match queries will work we will attempt to define specifications for search queries in other documents. Newton & Hollenbeck Expires October 03, 2013 [Page 10] Internet-Draft RDAP Query Format April 2013 It is important to note that there are already multiple implementations of RESTful RDAP-like prototypes that provide search capabilities. For example: ARIN: The American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) has published an API [1] (see Section 4.4.2) that describes using plural forms of path segment identifiers (e.g. "domains") and Matrix URIs [2] to indicate that a client is requesting a list of values when searching for RIR registration data. A prototype service [3] that implements this API is up and running. Verisign: Verisign has deployed a prototype service [4] that implements searches for DNR registration data using HTML query strings (e.g. "?_PRE") to identify search parameters. For example, "http://dnrd.verisignlabs.com/dnrd-ap/domain/ verisign?_PRE" performs a search for domain names with a "verisign" prefix. Appendix B. Change Log Initial -00: Adopted as working group document. -01: Added "Conventions Used in This Document" section. Added normative reference to draft-ietf-weirds-rdap-sec and some wrapping text in the Security Considerations section. -02: Removed "unified" from the title. Rewrote the last paragraph of section 2. Edited the first paragraph of section 3 to more clearly note that only one path segement is provided. Added "bitmask" to "length" in section 3.1. Changed "lowest IP network" to "smallest IP network" in section 3.1. Added "asplain" to the description of autonomous system numbers in section 3.2. Minor change from "semantics is" to "semantics are" in section 3.2. Changed the last sentence in section 4 to more clearly specify error response behavior. Added acknowledgements. Added a paragraph in the introduction regarding future IETF standards and extensibility. -03: Changed 'query' to 'lookup' in document title to better describe the 'exact match lookup' purpose of this document. Included a multitude of minor additions and clarifications provided by Marc Blanchet and Jean-Philippe Dionne. Modified the domain and name server sections to include support for IDN U-labels. -04: Updated the domain and name server sections to use .example IDN U-labels. Added text to note that mixed IDN labels SHOULD NOT be used. Fixed broken sentences in Section 5. Authors' Addresses Newton & Hollenbeck Expires October 03, 2013 [Page 11] Internet-Draft RDAP Query Format April 2013 Andrew Lee Newton American Registry for Internet Numbers 3635 Concorde Parkway Chantilly, VA 20151 US Email: andy@arin.net URI: http://www.arin.net Scott Hollenbeck Verisign Labs 12061 Bluemont Way Reston, VA 20190 US Email: shollenbeck@verisign.com URI: http://www.verisignlabs.com/ Newton & Hollenbeck Expires October 03, 2013 [Page 12]