Internet Draft                                                 R. Rader 
Document: draft-rader-dn-defn-00                            Tucows Inc. 
Category: Informational                                  December, 2001 
                                                                        
 
 
                  Domain Name and Related Definitions 
 
 
Status of this Memo 
 
   This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with 
   all provisions of Section 10 of RFC 2026 [1].  
    
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   http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt  
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1. Abstract 
    
   A numberf of policy and technical development efforts related to the 
   DNS are underway, both within the engineering community, ICANN-
   circles and elsewhere in light of the current and evolving scope and 
   utility of DNS, domain name registries and related entities. In 
   order for this work to be truly effective and broadly applicable, it 
   is important that accepted definitions act as the foundation. This 
   document is an attempt to create a starting point for the requisite 
   dialogue that will ultimately foster the determination and 
   acceptance of these new protocols. This document obsoletes <draft-
   rader-dnwhois-defn-00.txt> and <draft-ietf-provreg-dn-defn-01.txt.. 
    
    
2. 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 [3]. 
    
    
3. Definitions 
    
   ccTLD: See “Top Level Domain, Country Code”. 
    
  
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   Contact: Contacts are individuals or entities associated with domain 
   name records. Typically, third parties with specific inquiries or 
   concerns will use contact records to determine who should act upon 
   specific issues related to a domain name record. There are typically 
   three of these contact types associated with a domain name record, 
   the Administrative contact, the Billing contact and the Technical 
   contact.  
     
   Contact, Administrative: The administrative contact is an 
   individual, role or organization authorized to interact with the 
   registry or registrar on behalf of the Domain Holder. The 
   administrative contact should be able to answer non-technical 
   questions about the domain name's registration and the Domain 
   Holder. In all cases, the Administrative Contact is viewed as the 
   authoritative point of contact for the domain name, second only to 
   the Domain Holder. 
         
   Contact, Billing: The billing contact is the individual, role or 
   organization designated to receive the invoice for domain name 
   registration and re-registration fees. 
         
   Contact, Technical: The technical contact is the individual, role or 
   organization who is responsible for the technical operations of the 
   delegated zone. This contact likely maintains the domain name 
   server(s) for the domain. The technical contact should be able to 
   answer technical questions about the domain name, the delegated zone 
   and work with technically oriented people in other zones to solve 
   technical problems that affect the domain name and/or zone. 
    
   DNS: See “Domain Name System”. 
    
   Domain Holder: The individual or organization that registers a 
   specific domain name. This individual or organization holds the 
   right to use that specific domain name for a specified period of 
   time, provided certain conditions are met and the registration fees 
   are paid. This person or organization is the "legal entity" bound by 
   the terms of the relevant service agreement with the registry 
   operator for the TLD in question. 
    
   Domain Name System: The domain name system is a distributed database 
   arranged hierarchically. Its purpose is to provide a layer of 
   abstraction between other Internet services (web, email, etc.) and 
   the numeric addresses (IP addresses) used to uniquely identify any 
   given machine on the Internet. 
    
    
   Exclusive Registration System: A domain name registration system in 
   which registry services are limited to a single registrar. Exclusive 
   Registration Systems may be either loosely coupled (in which case 
   the separation between Registry and Registrar systems is readily 
   evident), or tightly coupled (in which case the separation between 
   registry and registrar systems is obscure). 
  
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   GTLD: See “Top Level Domain, Generic”. 
    
   Glue Record: A Glue Record is an A record that is created as part of 
   a delegation.  
    
   IP Address: Either or both IPv4 or IPv6 address 
    
   ICANN: Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. A non-
   profit organization founded to assume responsibility for IP address 
   space assignment, protocol parameter assignment, domain name system 
   management and root server system management. 
         
   IANA: Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. The prior organization 
   that was tasked with responsibility for IP address space assignment, 
   protocol parameter assignment, domain name system management and 
   root server system management. Now limited to performing the 
   technical delegation of TLDs under ICANN. 
    
   InterNIC: The InterNIC, a registered service mark of the U.S. 
   Department of Commerce, is a concept for an integrated network 
   information center that was developed by several companies, 
   including Network Solutions, in cooperation with the U.S. 
   Government. Until recently, the term InterNIC is being used in 
   conjunction with a neutral, stand alone web page (located at 
   http://www.internic.net) that has been established to provide the 
   public with information regarding Internet domain name registration. 
   ICANN has recently undertaken an agreement with the United States 
   Department of Commerce to undertake operation of the effort. The 
   InterNIC was originally created by NSF to provide specific Internet 
   services; directory & database services (by AT&T), registration 
   services (by Network Solutions) and information services (by General 
   Atomics/CERFnet). [4] 
    
   ISO-3166-1: A document maintained by the International Standards 
   Organization that gives coded representations of more than 230 names 
   of countries or areas independent from countries. This document 
   contains two-letter (Alpha-2-code), a three-letter code (Alpha-3-
   code) and a three-digit numeric code (Numeric-3-code) for every 
   entry in its list of country names. This has been typically the 
   document that IANA uses to create ccTLD entries in the root-zone 
   system. [5] 
    
   Nameserver: A computer running software that authoritatively looks 
   up the numeric equivalent (IP Address) of a record in a zone file, 
   usually for the purpose of allowing remote client access to remote 
   server resources over a network.  
    
   Namespace: All combinations of Domain Names and Top Level Domains, 
   registered and otherwise, existing below the Root System.  
    
   NIC: Network Information Center. 
  
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   NIC Handle: A NIC Handle is an identifier in use by some registrars 
   and registries that is assigned to various records in the domain 
   name database. Globally, they do not have a common format or 
   application. Further, they are not globally unique. 
    
   NSF: National Science Foundation. 
    
   Object: A generic term used to describe entities that are created, 
   updated, deleted, and otherwise managed by a generic registry-
   registrar protocol. This includes nameserver objects, contact 
   objects and other similar entities. 
    
   Registrant: See Domain Holder. 
    
   Registrar: A person or entity that, via contract with Domain Holders 
   and a Registry, provides front-end domain name registration services 
   to registrants, providing a public interface to registry services. 
    
   Registrar, Accredited: A Registrar that has been certified as 
   meeting certain minimal criteria to act as a Registrar for a 
   specific TLD. This term is almost solely used when referring to 
   Registrars that have been certified by ICANN. ccTLD Registries also 
   accredit registrars, and though they may use differing terms, the 
   concepts are largely the same. 
    
   Registrar, Sponsoring: The Registrar responsible for the submission 
   of the domain name to the Registry. 
    
   Registrar Operator: A term used to denote the entity providing the 
   technical services to a Registrar in support of their registration 
   services. Also referred to as a “Registrar Outsourcer” or “Registrar 
   Provider”.  
    
   Registration Authority: The policy making body for any given TLD. 
   Examples include the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, 
   Nominet and MuseDoma. 
    
   Registry: A Registry is the person(s) or entity(ies) responsible for 
   providing registry services. Registry services include customer 
   database administration, zone file publication, DNS operation, 
   marketing and policy determination in accordance with the general 
   principles outlined in RFC 1591 [5]. A Registry may outsource some, 
   all, or none of these services. 
    
   Registry, Thick: A registry in which all of the information 
   associated with registered entities, including both technical 
   information (information needed to produce zone files) and social 
   information (information needed to implement operational, business, 
   or legal practices), is stored within the registry repository. 
    

  
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   Registry, Thin: A registry in which some element of the social 
   information associated with registered entities is distributed 
   between a shared registry and the registrars served by the registry. 
    
   Registry Operator: Usually synonymous with the term Registry, 
   however a Registry Operator may also be an organization or 
   individual acting operating the Registry under an outsourced 
   technical services management contract. 
    
   Root System: The aggregate of all DNS activities, Top Level Domains 
   and Domain Names existing in the Namespace.  
    
   SLD: An "SLD" is a second-level domain of the DNS 
    
   SLD, Functional: A reasonable equivalent to an SLD in a namespace 
   where second level domains are not permitted for policy reasons. An 
   example of a Functional SLD would be foo.com.au. While .com is the 
   actual SLD, .au policy does not permit the widespread registration 
   of second level domains, thereby creating a proliferation of 
   Functional SLDs (in this case .foo) in the .au namespace. 
    
   SLD Holder: See "Domain Holder" 
         
   SLD Sponsor: See "Registrar, Sponsoring". 
    
   Shared Registration System: A domain name registration system in 
   which registry services are shared among multiple independent 
   registrars. Shared Registration Systems require a loose coupling 
   between registrars and a registry. 
    
   TLD: Top Level Domain.  A generic term used to describe both gTLDs 
   and ccTLDs that exist under the top-level root of the domain name 
   hierarchy. 
    
   Top Level Domain: See “TLD”. 
    
   Top Level Domain, Country Code: A TLD that corresponds to an entry 
   in the ISO-3166-1 list. .UK, .GG, .JE are also ccTLDs despite the 
   lack of a corresponding entry in the ISO-3166-1 list. 
    
   Top Level Domain, Generic: A TLD created to act as a globally 
   relevant resource. Examples of these include .COM, .NET, .ORG, 
   .INFO, .BIZ and .AERO amongst others. 
    
   Whois: a TCP transaction based query/response server, that providing 
   netwide directory service to network users. The Whois Protocol was 
   originally defined in RFC 954. The initial domain name related 
   application layer implementations were centralized systems run by 
   SRC-NIC and then later InterNIC/Network Solutions. The SRI-NIC and 
   InterNIC implementations are more formally referred to as 
   "NICNAME/Whois" services. Whois is not purely a domain name or IP 
   address directory service, but has been deployed for a wide variety 
  
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   of uses, both public and private. Other variants of this service 
   include RWhois and the newer Verisign Referral LDAP Whois service. 
   Whois can refer to the protocol defined in RFC 954 or the generic 
   application service described above. 
    
   Whois, Bulk: A data retrieval mechanism required by ICANN that 
   specifies that all ICANN accredited Registrars must make their Whois 
   dataset available as a single machine readable file. Put another 
   way, Bulk Whois is the entire Registrar Whois dataset available for 
   retrieval via FTP, HTTP or some other mechanism. Thick Registries 
   also may provide a similar service in allowing entities to retrieve 
   the Registry Whois dataset. 
         
   Whois, Command-line: A Whois query executed from the command line of 
   an operating system such as Linux or MS-DOS. 
    
   Whois Record: The information or payload returned to the client as a 
   result of a Whois query. 
         
   Whois, Referral: RWhois (Referral Whois) extends and enhances the 
   Whois concept in a hierarchical and scaleable fashion. In accordance 
   with this, RWhois focuses primarily on the distribution of "network 
   objects", or the data representing Internet resources or people, and 
   uses the inherently hierarchical nature of these network objects 
   (domain names, Internet Protocol (IP) networks, email addresses) to 
   more accurately discover the requested information. [6] 
         
   Whois, Registrar: Whois services made available by specific 
   registrars for the domain names that they sponsor at the Registry. 
         
   Whois, Registry: Whois services made available by specific 
   registries for the domain names that they are authoritative for. 
   Registry Whois often do not provide the comprehensive contact 
   information that Registrar Whois services do, but they usually 
   contain contact information for the Sponsoring Registrar. Note that 
   the payload provided to the client by the Registry is not 
   standardized between Registries and may vary based on the model 
   employed by the Registry. 
         
   Whois, Web based: A World Wide Web interface to Registrar or 
   Registry Whois services. 
    
   Zone: A portion of the total domain namespace that is represented by 
   the data stored on a particular nameserver. The nameserver has 
   authority over the zone – or the particular portion of the domain 
   namespace – described by that data.   
    
   Zone File: A file that contains data describing a portion of the 
   domain name space. Zone files contain the information needed to 
   resolve domain names to Internet Protocol (IP) numbers. 
     

  
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   Zone Transfer: The process by which nameservers request and 
   replicate Zone File data from remote nameservers. 
         
         
4. Security Considerations 
    
   This memo provides definitions for administrative terms related to 
   DNS and does not raise or address security issues. 
    
    
5. References 
    
   [1]  Bradner, S., "The Internet Standards Process -- Revision 3", 
      BCP 9, RFC 2026, October 1996. 
    
   [2]  Harrenstein, Stahl & Feinler, "NICName/Whois", RFC 954, October     
      1985.  
    
   [3]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement 
      Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997 
    
   [4]  Kristula, D., "History of the Internet", 
      http://davesite.com/webstation/net-history.shtml, 1996. 
    
   [5]  DIN Deutsches Institut für Normung, “Scope and applications of 
      ISO 3166-1”, 
      http://www.din.de/gremien/nas/nabd/iso3166ma/scopappl.html, 2001. 
    
   [5]  Postel, J., "Domain Name System Structure and Delegation", RFC 
      1591, March, 1994. 
    
   [6]  Williamson, Kosters, Blacka, Singh & Zeilstra, "Referral Whois 
      (Rwhois) Protocol V1.5", RFC 2167, June 1997. 
    
    
6. Acknowledgments 
    
   This document is the result of input and motivation from a wide 
   variety of individuals and entities. Rick Wesson, Scott Allan and 
   Tim Jung provided the primary motivators with ICANN, IANA and 
   Network Solutions providing the history and context. Additionally, 
   the various terms and conditions, operating contracts and frequently 
   asked questions documents produced by various Registries and 
   Registrars were instrumental in the production of this document. 
   Where appropriate, these contributions will be specifically 
   acknowledged in the References portion of future iterations of this 
   draft. 
    
   Other portions of this document have assumed definitions from " 
   Generic Registry-Registrar Protocol Requirements" (draft-hollenbeck-
   grrp-reqs-06.txt, January, 2001), by Scott Hollenbeck, at the 
   author's request. 
  
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   Certain definitions have been reproduced, in part and without 
   permission from the Network Solutions DNS Glossary that can be found 
   at http://www.networksolutions.com/cgi-bin/glossary/lookup. 
                      
    
7. Author's Address 
    
   Ross Wm. Rader 
   Tucows Inc. 
   96 Mowat Avenue 
   Toronto, Ontario 
   M9C 3M1 
   t. 416.538.5492 
   f. 416.531.2516 
   e. ross@tucows.com 
    
    


































  
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