RFC 2146

U.S. Government Internet Domain Names 🇺🇸✨

📋 The title block, bestie: this one is from the Federal Networking Council (Network Working Group), it's RFC 2146, dated May 1997, and it's Informational (it gives info to the Internet community, it doesn't set a standard 🙈). It obsoletes RFC 1816 (Obsoletes: 1816). It's also an update and clarification to 1816, which we'll get to in the abstract 💅

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Status of this Memo 📝

Okay, so this memo is just giving info to the Internet community 🫶 It's not an Internet standard of any kind, and it can be shared as much as you want, so distribution is unlimited ✨

Abstract 🦋

This doc updates and clarifies RFC 1816 ✨ It lays out the registration rules for the top-level domain .GOV, which exists so US Federal government agencies get easy-to-recognize names that make their online stuff easier to find 🎀 The rules are meant to stop name duplicates and keep things responsive for the public, and they only let registrations match the approved structure of the US government plus advice from its Chief Information Officers 👑

Two docs count as the official reference for how the government is structured 📚 First, FIPS 95-1 gives a standard structure that .GOV and FED.US registrations can fit into. Second, the US Government Manual [3] is a special publication of the Federal Register with official info on the government structure. The Manual may get updated more often than FIPS 95-1, so it's the more up-to-date one 🌸 Either doc works for figuring out which entities qualify for a second-level registration under .GOV and FED.US 💖

Also, this RFC cuts down the number of .GOV and FED.US level registrations, which takes some workload off the registration authority 🧚 Older versions didn't cover FED.US at all, but this one plans for .GOV moving over to FED.US, which is how the Internet usually does things these days 🌈

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U.S. GOVERNMENT INTERNET DOMAIN NAMES POLICY 👑

Okay, the main vibe: the .GOV domain is delegated from the root authority to the US Federal Networking Council 🫶 It's only for US governmental entities on the federal level 🙅‍♀️ State and local government agencies go under .US instead, following that domain's own rules 💅 Anywhere this doc says .GOV, it applies to FED.US too ✨

The most iconic summary of the whole policy is "one agency, one name" 💜 The agency can pick its own name, but an easy-to-recognize acronym is suggested 🎀 Below are the types of agencies that do and don't qualify 👇

1. The document "Codes for the Identification of Federal and Federally Assisted Organizations", FIPS 95-1 (or its successor), lists the official names of US Government agencies 📋 Either that doc or the US Government Manual can be used to check if an entity can get a second-level .GOV registration 🔍
   • A) Top-level entities 👑 (like the ones in FIPS 95-1 with codes ending in 00, such as such a"1200 Department of Agriculture"), the ones in the US Government Manual listed as "Departments, Independent Establishments (not Corporations), and all the Boards, Commissions, and Committees", and independent agencies and organizations (like "National Science Foundation" and other non-indented listings, unless banned below) are all eligible for direct .GOV registration ✨
   • B) Cross-agency collaborative orgs (like "Federal Networking Council" or "Information Infrastructure Task Force") can register under .GOV once they show their chartering doc 📜 They're the only orgs that aren't in FIPS 95-1 or the US Government Manual that can register under .GOV 🫶
   • C) Subsidiary, non-autonomous parts of top-level or other entities can't register separately 🙅‍♀️ International organizations listed in this doc are NOT eligible for .GOV registration 🌍 Subsidiary parts should register as third-level domains under their parent org 🧩 Other Federal entities can apply to FED.US instead 💖
   • D) Orgs listed as "Federally Aided Organizations" in FIPS 95-1 are not eligible for .GOV and should register under .ORG or another top-level domain that fits their status 🎀
   • E) Orgs subsidiary to "Department of Defense" must register under the .MIL domain through the Defense Data Network Information Center, contact registrar@nic.ddn.mil 🫡
   • F) Other entities can be registered at the request of a cognizant Chief Information Officer (CIO) 👑 CIOs are the agency officials the agency head designates under the Information Technology Management Reform Act of 1996 and Executive Order 13011 📜
   • G) Federal Courts are a special class of domains 🏛️ Every Federal court looking for a domain registration should contact the Administrative Office of the US Courts for guidance on policy and naming 💅
     • a) The string SUPREME-COURT is reserved for the Supreme Court domain 👑✨
     • b) All other courts and their officers and officials should register in .USCOURTS.GOV 🏛️ The only standard exceptions to these rules are changes to government structure from statutory, regulatory, or executive directives that aren't in the doc above yet 📜 The requesting agency should give documentation in one of the forms above to ask for an exception 🙏 Any other exception requests should be referred to the Federal Networking Council 🫶
2. A domain name should be derived from the official name for the organization (e.g., USDA.Gov or AGRICULTURE.GOV.) 💖 The registration shall be listed in the registration database under the official name (per FIPS 95-1 or US Government Manual) for the organization, or under the name in the chartering document 📋

Q: Isn't it bad to name things after organizational boundaries when those boundaries keep changing? Once Internet domain names and host names are defined and in use, they spread so far that they're basically impossible to change! 😭

A: The policy doesn't make organizations change their names once they're set up, but individual agency policies might. 🦋 DNS has some handy tools for transitions. The CNAME record lets you make cross-domain aliases, which can ease a move from one name space to another. ✨ As noted in the clarifications, naming and sub-domain conventions WITHIN an agency or department's DNS delegation are solely that entity's province. 👑

Q: How can two entities have the same name registered? How does this apply to NIH.GOV, FDA.GOV, and CDC.GOV, which are all big components of DHHS/PHS? NCIFCRF.GOV is a component of NIH. Does it have to change? I don't get how a distinction is made if some are grandfathered and some aren't. 🙈

A: US-STATE.GOV and STATE.GOV are an example. The actual problem is one entity with two names. NIH.GOV and FDA.GOV are separate entities (albeit within DHHS), so they're fine. If there were an NIH.GOV and an NIH-EAST.GOV, NIH would have to get rid of one of them (probably moving NIH-EAST.GOV to EAST.NIH.GOV). 🌸

Q: How much is the taxpayer being asked to spend to change tens of thousands of existing computer and telecommunications systems to support this RFC? 💸

A: In August 1995, fewer than half a dozen duplicate DNS names at the FIPS 95-1 level needed changing. Since this will be done over three years, the costs should be minimal. 💖

Cross-Agency Collaborations 🤝

Q: An organization maintains a domain name for a cross-agency community, IC.GOV, which represents members of the intelligence community. As a cross-agency collaborative effort, does the domain have to be re-registered?

A: The policy says: "Cross-agency collaborative organizations (e.g., "Federal Networking Council", "Information Infrastructure Task Force") are eligible for registration under .GOV upon presentation of the chartering document and are the only non-listed (in either FIPS 95-1 or the US Government Manual) organizations eligible for registration under .GOV." 🧚 IC.GOV, however, is grandfathered since it's an existing domain. Still, it would be appropriate to send a copy of the chartering document to the FNC for the record. That would make future changes to IC.GOV easier if they're ever needed. 📜

Future .GOV Registrations 🔮

Q: Top-level domains are roughly equivalent to the cabinet-level agencies identified in FIPS 95-1. What will happen if non-FIPS 95-1 entities apply for .GOV registration in the future?

A: The registrar will use this RFC as guidance. It won't grant .GOV to any new entity that isn't listed in FIPS 95-1 or the US Government Manual, or that hasn't been granted an exception status by the FNC Executive Committee. 🚫

Q: Suppose NIH were moved to a new Dept. of Science. Would our domain name have to change?

A: NIH.GOV is grandfathered under the existing policy and wouldn't change. The "Department of Science" under its own policies may require you to re-register, though. 🌈

FNC Intent 🎯

Q: It's unclear how this policy will help the public access our information, especially since most of the public doesn't know our organizational structure or that CDC is part of DHHS/PHS.

A: The policy tries to avoid confusion as more entities register under .GOV. It also moves authority and responsibility for domain name space to the appropriate agencies, away from a centralized authority. For access, various tools and capabilities keep coming into use on the Internet. Most of these offer a fairly strong search capability, which should make most worries about finding resources by domain name unnecessary. 🔍

Q: Section 1D of this document unfairly constrains the organizations within the .GOV domain, in stark contrast to Section 1F, which gives .MIL domain organizations full freedom to operate sub-domains in any manner they choose.

A: The Federal Networking Council has jurisdiction over .GOV domain names. .MIL domain names fall under the Department of Defense. The .MIL domain has had a written policy delimiting which DOD agencies get registered directly under .MIL since about 1987, when DNS first started to come into use. Individual agencies under .MIL (e.g., AF.MIL/US Air Force) are responsible for setting policy within their domains and for registrations within those domains. This is exactly equivalent to .GOV: an individual agency (e.g., Treasury.GOV/Dept of Treasury) may and should set policy for sub-registrations within their domain. 🎀

Q: Section 1B identifies several law enforcement agencies as being "autonomous" for the purposes of domain registration. What is the selection criteria for an "autonomous law enforcement" agency? For instance, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is responsible for law enforcement, as is the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF).

A: The selection criteria for "law enforcement agency" is based on primary mission. A case could be made for either or both of these being law enforcement agencies. The IRS's primary mission is tax revenue collection, though, and it has few armed officers relative to its size. An "autonomous" agency is one with a mission and role that are distinct from, and (possibly) separate from, its containing department. Unfortunately, FIPS 95-1 doesn't do a good job of identifying "autonomous" entities. If registration runs into problems, ask the registrar to get a ruling from the registration authority. ⚖️

Routing Questions 🛣️

Q: How will Domain Name Service resolution on the Internet work? Instead of a root DNS server returning the address of CDC.GOV and immediately directing inquiries to our DNS servers, will the root server return a DNS pointer to DHHS, then DHHS will resolve to PHS, then a fourth DNS query to get to CDC? This will add unnecessary traffic to the Net. (Example is the host CDC.PHS.DHHS.GOV.)

A: The answer depends on how you (personally and agency-wide) configure your servers. First, most servers cache previous answers. They may have to ask once, but they generally remember the answer if they need it again. Information directly under .GOV will be fairly long-lived, which greatly reduces the need to query the .GOV server. Second, multiple levels of the DNS tree MAY reside on the same server. In the example above, the information for DHHS.GOV, PHS.DHHS.GOV, and CDC.PHS.DHHS.GOV could all reside on the same server. If the location of the DHHS.GOV server wasn't cached, it would take two queries. Further queries would cache the location of this server and the servers associated with the domains it serves. Lastly, individual agencies may structure their domains as they please. CDC could reside directly under DHHS.GOV as CDC.DHHS.GOV, subject to HHS's own policies. 🧠

Using DNS for Advertising Services 📣

Q: How can agencies utilize domain names for public service announcements, such as regulatory information, health services, etc.?

A: The use of domain names for "advertising" is not encouraged, and there's no empirical data showing that domain names are effective for such purposes. Moreover, while it may seem like a reasonable assumption, we know of no evidence that using even commonly known agency, program, or service names as domain names actually makes it easier to locate a particular program or service. We find it just as reasonable to conclude that, by using freely available search engines, a user could locate responsive information before they'd successfully "guess" the right domain name. 🙃

If the agency CIO deems it advisable to pursue "advertising via domain names," the agency should use the WHOIS utility (e.g., whois EXAMPLE.COM or whois EXAMPLE.ORG) to determine whether similar or conflicting names exist in other domains, such as .COM or .ORG, before proceeding. Any advertising value may be lost if the same or similar names exist within more than one domain. 💅

Preventing Similar Names in Other Top-Level Domains 🪞

Q: Our agency spent a lot of time coming up with an intuitive domain name, and now we find out that the same name exists in .COM and .ORG and is confusing to our customers. They don't know if it's really our site or not. How can we prevent this use of our domain name?

A: The only practical way is to register your name in all available domains and hold them. We say hold (do not use) them for the same reasons you don't want your site spoofed: customer uncertainty about whether they're actually at a government site. The implications of Federal agencies using anything other than .GOV or FED.US is a policy matter under the statutory authorities of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs of the Office of Management and Budget. Agency CIOs should consult with OMB prior to using domain names other than .GOV or .FED.US. 🏛️

Third-Level Domains: Contacting the Second-Level Domain Administrator 📇

Q: I don't mind having a third-level domain registration, but my parent agency doesn't have a second-level domain or doesn't provide third-level registration services. What can I do?

A: In the first case, the registration authority can usually provide contact information for an appropriate second-level domain. If not, an exception may be granted by the registration authority. In the second case, make sure you contact the official administrative contact for the second-level domain by using the information returned by the "whois" command, e.g., "whois STATE.GOV". The domain administrators have the responsibility of providing third-level registration services. If an exception is granted because there's no appropriate second-level domain, it will only be valid for two years after the subsequent establishment of an appropriate domain. After that time, the exception domain must register in the appropriate second-level domain. ⏳

Q: What are the implications of using a name that conflicts with a .COM or other top-level domain?

A: When requesting exceptions to this policy, applicants should consider the limitations of the domain naming scheme. Many common words and terms are already used in .COM, the largest TLD at this time, so it may be ineffective to use the same name in .GOV. 🤔

US Government Manual 📖

Q: How can I get the US Government Manual?

A: Contact the Superintendent of Documents at:

Contact Superintendent of Documents
P.O. Box 371954
Pittsburgh, PA 15250-7954

or see http://www.access/gpo.gov/su_docs and follow the links to US government information. 🇺🇸📚

Security Considerations ✨

okay bestie, this part is serious 😭 The info in the DNS databases, and the info handed out over network protocols, is NOT reliable on the Internet unless there are extra cryptographic controls or secure lines. 🔐 Agencies with secure internal network lines might be able to trust their internal naming info as accurate, but people out on the Internet can't. 🙈

The DNS system can be level-upped with digital signatures on the info it serves 💅. As that software becomes available, .GOV SLD administrators are encouraged to use it to provide a secure binding for the information associated with DNS names. 🦋✨

Author's Address 💌

      Federal Networking Council
      4001 N. Fairfax Drive
      Arlington, VA 22203
      Phone: (703) 522-6410
      EMail: execdir@fnc.gov
      URL:  http://www.fnc.gov