RFC 3980

T11 Network Address Authority (NAA) Naming Format for iSCSI Node Names

📅 published February 2005, from ietf

RFC 3980 🎀 T11 Network Address Authority (NAA) Naming Format for iSCSI Node Names

okay bestie, let's start with the title block because it's giving important context ✨ This is a Standards Track doc from the Network Working Group, written by Marjorie Krueger, Mallikarjun Chadalapaka, and Rob Elliott, all at Hewlett-Packard Corp. It's dated February 2005. It updates RFC 3720 (that's the iSCSI spec), and the title block doesn't list anything it obsoletes. 💅

Status of This Memo ✨

this doc specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the Internet community, and it asks for discussion and suggestions for improvements 🫶 For the standardization state and status of this protocol, check the current edition of the "Internet Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1). Distribution of this memo is unlimited 🌈

Copyright Notice 🌸

Abstract 🦋

iSCSI is a SCSI transport protocol that maps the SCSI family of protocols onto TCP/IP, so it's basically the SCSI vibes riding on the internet 🧚 This doc adds one more iSCSI node name type format. It lets you use the "Network Address Authority" (NAA) worldwide naming format, which is defined by the InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS) T11 Fibre Channel (FC) protocols and is already used by Serial Attached SCSI (SAS). This document updates RFC 3720 🎀

Table of Contents 📖

   1.  Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  2
   2.  Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  2
   3.  Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  3
   4.  iSCSI NAA Name Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  3
       4.1.  Type "naa." - Network Address Authority. . . . . . . . .  3
   5.  Terminology  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
       5.1.  IQN. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
       5.2.  SRP. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
       5.3.  SAS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
       5.4.  NAA. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
       5.5.  InfiniBand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
       5.6.  INCITS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
       5.7.  T10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
       5.8.  T11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5

   6.  Security Considerations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
   7.  References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
       7.1.  Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
       7.2.  Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
   Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
   Full Copyright Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8

1. Introduction 💖

this doc talks about why we'd want to add an NAA type format as an iSCSI node naming format, and it defines that format following the iSCSI naming conventions [RFC3720] 🧁 The big payoff is that SCSI storage devices with both iSCSI ports and SAS ports can use the same NAA-based SCSI device name. literally so cute 😭

2. Background ✨

A bunch of networked transports already give the SCSI protocol port abstractions, and they all have some kind of world-wide unique name construction format 🌍 The table below sums up the current protocols and their naming formats.

       SCSI Transport Protocol     Naming Format
    -----------------------------------------------
   |                            | EUI-64| NAA |IQN |
   |----------------------------|-------|-----|----|
   |    iSCSI (Internet SCSI)   |   X   |     | X  |
   |----------------------------|-------|-----|----|
   |     FCP (Fibre Channel)    |       |  X  |    |
   |----------------------------|-------|-----|----|
   | SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) |       |  X  |    |
   |----------------------------|-------|-----|----|
   |    SRP (for InfiniBand)    |   X   |     |    |
    -----------------------------------------------

The INCITS T11 Framing and Signaling Specification [FC-FS] defines a format called the Network Address Authority (NAA) format. It's used for building worldwide unique identifiers that work with various identifier registration authorities 🔥 This identifier format is used by the Fibre Channel and SAS SCSI transport protocols. Since most networked SCSI ports today are either FC or SAS, NAA is the most commonly used identifier format for SCSI transports. it's the main character of SCSI naming 👑

3. Motivation 🌈

If iSCSI had a naming format that could directly represent an NAA-format name, it would be so much easier to build a target device name that translates smoothly across multiple namespaces. This is especially true for a SCSI storage device with ports served by different transports 🧚

So this doc defines an NAA type iSCSI naming format, which means one NAA identifier can be the base for the SCSI device name of a SCSI target with both SAS ports and iSCSI ports. iconic energy 🎀

INCITS T10 SCSI defined a string format SCSI target device name in [SPC3], and it gets reported in the VPD page 83 device identifier page 🍓 [SAM3] specifies that a SCSI device shall have no more than one (i.e., zero or one) SCSI device name in the SCSI name string format, no matter how many SCSI transport protocols the device supports. Adding the INCITS T11-defined NAA format as a type for iSCSI device names would make iSCSI naming more consistent across all the current SCSI networked transports that define an NAA format SCSI device name. That makes transport-independent SCSI device names way easier to create, and it also helps create SCSI Logical Unit (LU) names based on that device name 💅

4. iSCSI NAA Name Structure 🦋

This doc defines one more iSCSI name type:

   type "naa." - the remainder of the string is an INCITS T11 defined
                 Network Address Authority identifier in ASCII-encoded
                 hexadecimal.

4.1. Type "naa." - Network Address Authority ✨

[FC-FS] defines a format for building globally unique identifiers, which it calls the Network Address Authority (NAA) format 🌸

So the iSCSI NAA naming format is "naa.", followed by an NAA identifier written as ASCII-encoded hexadecimal digits. ✨

Here's an example of an iSCSI name with a 64-bit NAA value:

         Type  NAA identifier (ASCII-encoded hexadecimal)
         +--++--------------+
         |  ||              |

         naa.52004567BA64678D

And here's an example of an iSCSI name with a 128-bit NAA value:

         Type  NAA identifier (ASCII-encoded hexadecimal)
         +--++------------------------------+
         |  ||                              |

         naa.62004567BA64678D0123456789ABCDEF

The iSCSI NAA naming format might show up in an implementation when the infrastructure for generating NAA worldwide unique names is already set up, which happens when the device has both SAS and iSCSI SCSI ports 🫶

The NAA identifier in ASCII-hexadecimal form has a maximum size of 32 characters (128 bit NAA format). So this naming format never goes over the maximum size for iSCSI node names, and that's a total non-issue 🙈

5. Terminology 📚

5.1. IQN 🧚

iSCSI qualified name, an identifier format defined by the iSCSI protocol [RFC3720] 💖

5.2. SRP 🌈

SCSI RDMA Protocol. SRP defines a SCSI protocol mapping onto the InfiniBand (tm) Architecture and/or functionally similar cluster protocols [SRP] ⭐

5.3. SAS 🔥

Serial Attached SCSI. The Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) standard has both a physical layer that's compatible with Serial ATA, and protocols for transporting SCSI commands to SAS devices and ATA commands to SATA devices [SAS] 💜

5.4. NAA 🎀

Network Address Authority, a naming format defined by the INCITS T11 Fibre Channel protocols [FC-FS] 👑

5.5. InfiniBand 🦋

An I/O architecture that was originally meant to replace PCI and to address high performance server interconnectivity [IB] ✨

5.6. INCITS 🌍

INCITS stands for InterNational Committee of Information Technology Standards. INCITS has a broad standardization scope in Information and Communications Technologies (ICT), covering storage, processing, transfer, display, management, organization, and retrieval of information. INCITS serves as ANSI's Technical Advisory Group for the ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1 (JTC 1). See http://www.incits.org. 🫶

5.7. T10 🍓

A technical committee within INCITS that develops standards and technical reports on I/O interfaces, especially the series of SCSI (Small Computer Systems Interface) standards. See http://www.t10.org. 💅

5.8. T11 🧁

A technical committee within INCITS that's responsible for standards development in the areas of Intelligent Peripheral Interface (IPI), High-Performance Parallel Interface (HIPPI), and Fibre Channel (FC). See http://www.t11.org. 🌸

part 1 is done, bestie 💖 part 2 is coming with Security Considerations, References, Authors' Addresses, and the Full Copyright Statement, so stay tuned 🫶

Intellectual Property ✨

okay so bestie, this part is all about who owns what 🫶 The IETF doesn't take a position on whether any Intellectual Property Rights or other rights might be claimed over the implementation or use of the technology in this document, or whether any license under those rights is or isn't available. It also doesn't say it has made any independent effort to find those rights 🙈 If you want the IETF's rules on rights in IETF Documents, check out BCP 78 and BCP 79 💅

Copies of IPR disclosures made to the IETF Secretariat, plus any assurances of licenses that are going to be made available, or the result of an attempt to get a general license or permission for implementers or users of this specification to use those proprietary rights, can all be found on the IETF on-line IPR repository at http://www.ietf.org/ipr 📚

The IETF invites any interested party to bring to its attention any copyrights, patents or patent applications, or other proprietary rights that may cover technology that may be required to implement this standard. Send that info to the IETF at ietf-ipr@ietf.org 💌

Acknowledgement 🌸

Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the Internet Society 💖

📦 where this page comes from

ietf: rfc3980 2005-02
💖 girlified by claude-haiku-5-5 on 2026-10-16: a language model's rewrite of the original, under its terms