Internet Draft R. Rader Document: draft-rader-dn-defn-01 Tucows Inc. Category: Informational June, 2003 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]. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet- Drafts. 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." The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html. 1. Abstract A number of policy and technical development efforts related to the DNS are underway within the engineering community, ICANN-circles and elsewhere due to the evolving scope and utility of DNS, domain name registries and related entities. It is important that accepted definitions act as the foundation for this work. This document is an attempt to create an optional starting point for the requisite dialogue that will ultimately foster the determination and acceptance of these new technical and contractual protocols. This document obsoletes , and . 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". Rader Informational - June, 2003 1 Domain Name & Related Def'n June, 2003 Contact: In the domain name and Whois context, 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 contact types associated with a domain name record, the Administrative contact, the Billing contact and the Technical contact. Other contact types may exist at the discretion of the implementer. Contacts may be related to any network resource and may not necessarily be associated specifically with domain name records in other contexts. 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. CRISP: See "Cross Registry Information Service Protocol Working Group". Cross Registry Information Service Protocol Working Group: An IETF working group engaged in defining a standard mechanism that can be used for finding authoritative information associated with a label, a protocol to transport queries and responses for accessing that information, and a first profile (schema & queries) to support commonly-required queries for domain registration information. Backwards compatibility with existing administrative directory services such as WHOIS is not a goal of this effort. (source: CRISP Working Group Description, http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/crisp- charter.html.) 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 Rader Informational - Expires December, 2003 2 Domain Name & Related Def'n June, 2003 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. The "Domain Holder", a termed originally coined by ICANN in its various operating contracts, is more widely referred to as the "Registrant". 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). Federated Internet Registry Service: a proposed distributed service for storing, locating and transferring information about Internet resources using LDAPv3. (source: "The Federated Internet Registry Service: Core Elements", < http://www.ietf.org/internet- drafts/draft-ietf-crisp-firs-core-01.txt>). FIRS: See "Federated Internet Registry Service". GTLD: See "Top Level Domain, Generic". Glue Record: A Glue Record is an A record that is created as part of a delegation. IANA: Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. The organization that was tasked with responsibility for IP address space assignment, protocol parameter assignment, domain name system management and root server system management prior to ICANN. Now limited to performing the technical delegation of TLDs and address space and managing protocol parameter assignments under ICANN. 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. Internet Registry Information Service: a proposed application layer client-server protocol for a framework of representing the query and result operations of the information services of Internet registries. (source: "IRIS - The Internet Registry Information Service (IRIS) Core Protocol draft-ietf-crisp-iris-core-02", Rader Informational - Expires December, 2003 3 Domain Name & Related Def'n June, 2003 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] IP Address: Either or both IPv4 or IPv6 address IRIS: See "Internet Registry Information Service". 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: In the domain name and Whois contexts, this is taken to mean all combinations of Domain Names and Top Level Domains, registered and otherwise, existing below the Root System. The term has different meanings in other contexts such as computer programming and others. NIC: Network Information Center. 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- Rader Informational - Expires December, 2003 4 Domain Name & Related Def'n June, 2003 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 Provisioning Protocol: the protocol that a Registry and Registrar use to communicate domain name specific details between one another for the purpose of registering and maintaining domain names. There are two protocols in primary use, RRP (Registry Registrar Protocol) and EPP (Extensible Provisioning Protocol). Registry Registrar Protocol (RRP) was developed by Network Solutions (NSI) in 1998 and 1999 to allow multiple registrars to provide second level Internet domain name registration services in the top level domains (TLDs) administered by the NSI TLD registry. Version 1.1.0 of the NSI RRP was published as Informational RFC 2832 in May 2000[refno]. VeriSign Global Registry Services (VGRS) updated the RRP specification with its publication of the Internet Draft entitled "VeriSign RRP v2.0.0" [refno]. The Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP) is the work product of the IETF Provisioning/Registration (provreg) Working Group. EPP is a text/XML protocol that permits multiple service providers to perform object provisioning operations using a shared central object repository. Rader Informational - Expires December, 2003 5 Domain Name & Related Def'n June, 2003 Specific implementations of EPP may have slight variances from one another due to the use of the EPP extension mechanisms that allow for implementation specific features and other object management capabilities. EPP is in production use by most gTLD Registry Operators with the exception of Verisign. Verisign has made a contractual commitment to migrate the .com and .net registry system to whichever protocol is adopted as a standard by the IETF community. 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. 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. RWhois: 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] 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. Rader Informational - Expires December, 2003 6 Domain Name & Related Def'n June, 2003 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: WHOIS was originally described in RFC 812 (NICNAME/WHOIS), dated 1982 and subsequently updated in RFC 954 (NICNAME/WHOIS), dated 1985. The original intent of the WHOIS protocol was to enable network users to obtain directory information about other users on the network using application programs such as NICNAME. The required information for this directory was defined by the Defense Communications Agency (DCA). As noted in RFC 954 the term WHOIS was generically used to refer to this directory service. The original directory service was like a small community phone book that provided researchers and developers with contact information. Over time other "objects" besides users were "registered" in this directory resulting in a directory service that is used by registries and registrars to record information about and for their customers, constituents, and stakeholders. This was done by following the same basic instructions originally issued by DCA without regard for the foreseeable use by the various parts of the internet community. There are several uses of this directory service that have evolved or been developed. These include information relating to the registrant of a DNS name, the operation of the DNS (identification of name servers), allocation and assignment of IP addresses, and routing policy. There are several types of registries that provide these services. In all cases, they are using the well known port, port 43. Whois is sometimes colloquially referred to using the terms "Socket-based Whois" and "Port 43 Whois" to denote client/server TCP/IP transactions as described in RFC 954. Whois++: A circa 1995 extension to the trivial WHOIS service described in RFC 954 to permit WHOIS-like servers to make available more structured information to the Internet. Whois++ is not in widespread use and is specified in RFC 1835 Whois, Bulk: A data retrieval mechanism required by ICANN that specifies that all ICANN accredited Registrars must make their Whois dataset available t third parties. Thick Registries also may provide Rader Informational - Expires December, 2003 7 Domain Name & Related Def'n June, 2003 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, LDAP: an experimental project launched by VeriSign, Inc., to explore the use of LDAP and LDAP-related technologies for use as a directory service of administrative domain registration information. Also referred to as "Referral LDAP Whois". (source: "Whois Domain Data using the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol(LDAP) draft- newton-ldap-whois-02", Whois Record: The sum of information pertaining to a specific domain name as contained in the relevant Whois database. Whois, Referral: An ad hoc process that allows a Whois server to retrieve data from a third party Whois server and provide a response to a Whois query for information that the queried server is not authoritative for. 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. Zone Transfer: The process by which nameservers request and replicate Zone File data from remote nameservers. 4. Security Considerations Rader Informational - Expires December, 2003 8 Domain Name & Related Def'n June, 2003 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. 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. Rader Informational - Expires December, 2003 9 Domain Name & Related Def'n June, 2003 Thanks to Ray Plzak for providing a most wonderful (and comprehensive) definition of "Whois" and to Andy Newton for pointing out (what felt like) a thousand and two nits. 7. Author's Address Ross Wm. Rader Tucows Inc. 96 Mowat Avenue Toronto, Ontario M6K 3M1 t. 416.538.5492 f. 416.531.2516 e. ross@tucows.com Rader Informational - Expires December, 2003 10 Domain Name & Related Def'n June, 2003 Full Copyright Statement "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. Rader Informational - Expires December, 2003 11