RFC 4729

RFC 4729: A Uniform Resource Name (URN) Namespace for the Near Field Communication (NFC) Forum 💖

okay bestie, this is RFC 4729 and it's giving registry energy 🎀. It's an Informational doc from the Network Working Group, written by M. Abel of the NFC Forum, and it's dated November 2006. The header doesn't list anything it obsoletes or updates, so it's a standalone vibe 🦋. It's Informational, so it just provides information for the Internet community and doesn't set an Internet standard ✨.

---

Status of This Memo ✨

okay so this section is the fine print 📜. It says the memo provides information for the Internet community, it does not specify an Internet standard of any kind, and distribution is unlimited 🌸.

Copyright Notice 🔥

Copyright (C) The IETF Trust (2006). 💜

Abstract 🦋

ngl the abstract is short and sweet 🍓. It describes the Namespace Identifier (NID) for Uniform Resource Name (URN) resources published by the Near Field Communication (NFC) Forum. The NFC Forum defines and manages resources that use this URN identification model, and management for those and other resource types is handled by the NFC Forum Technical Committee 👑.

Table of Contents 🧚

   1. Introduction ....................................................2
   2. URN Specification for "nfc" NID .................................2
   3. Examples ........................................................5
   4. Namespace Considerations ........................................5
   5. Community Considerations ........................................5
   6. Security Considerations .........................................6
   7. IANA Considerations .............................................6
   8. Informative References ..........................................6
   Acknowledgments ....................................................6

---

1. Introduction 🌈

okay so the NFC Forum is a specification development body, which means they're the group writing the rules for near-field communications 📱✨. Their activity is backed by a membership of chip vendors, smart card vendors, equipment vendors, software developers, finance and banking service providers, content providers, and other interested companies 💅. That's a whole squad 🫶.

Some of the technologies the NFC Forum is building need namespaces that are managed so they stay unique and persistent 🔒. To make that uniqueness absolute, the group decided it was appropriate to register a specific NID for NFC Forum use 👑. So a full and complete registration will go through the namespace specification process defined in [RFC3406] 📜. That's the proper, official glow-up 💖.

2. URN Specification for "nfc" NID 🎀

okay this is the main event, bestie 🦋. Here's the spec for the "nfc" NID, step by step.

Namespace ID:

nfc

Registration Information:

   Registration version number:  1
   Registration date:            2006-05-17

Declared registrant of the namespace:

   Registering organization
      Name:    Near Field Communication Forum, Inc.
      Address: 401 Edgewater Place, Suite 600
               Wakefield, MA  01880

   Designated contact
      Role:    Technical Program Manager
      Email:   TPM@nfc-forum.org

Declaration of syntactic structure:

so every URN using the "nfc" NID has a Namespace Specific String (NSS) with this exact structure 🧩:

urn:nfc:{NFCresource}:{ResourceSpecificString}

Here, "{NFCresource}" is a US-ASCII string that follows the URN syntax requirements in [RFC2141] and defines a specific class of resource 💜. Every resource class has its own labeling scheme, which is what "{ResourceSpecificString}" covers, and that one also has to follow the naming requirements of [RFC2141] ✨.

NFC Forum working groups manage the assignment of NFC resources and the specific registration values for each resource class 🌸. The Technical Committee coordinates creating new resource class assignments based on community need 🫶.

Relevant ancillary documentation:

the NFC Forum publishes specs about using near-field communication to exchange information between devices that are close together 📲. These include designations of new data types, schema, XML elements and attributes, protocols, and other formally named items meant for machine parsing 🤖. If you want the details, the NFC Forum web site is where the publications are made available to the community 🌐:

http://www.nfc-forum.org/

Identifier uniqueness considerations:

the NFC Forum working groups and Technical Committee will ensure that resource names assigned by the NFC Forum are unique within the resource classes they're responsible for 🔐.

When authority and responsibility for assigning names within a resource class is delegated to an external organization, committing to the uniqueness requirements for the assigned resource names is a pre-condition of that delegation 🤝.

The way the NFC Forum namespace is split into resource classes will further ensure that names in each class are isolated from names in other classes 🧱. That's giving separate lanes 🛣️.

Some resource classes may be open to self-assignment by any interested individual or organization 🙌. To keep self-assigned resource names reasonably unique, fully-qualified domain names will be factored into the name so the naming authorities can be told apart 🏷️.

Lowkey the honest part: because of the flexibility of the domain name system and the market-based forces that allow domain names to change owners or be abandoned, no guarantee of long-term uniqueness or persistence can be made for this class of resource names beyond what's already guaranteed for the domain names themselves 💀. No cap, that's a real caveat.

Identifier persistence considerations:

the NFC Forum will not reassign names, so it guarantees the persistence of names beyond the expected lifetime of the named resource 💎. NFC Forum doesn't expect to operate a name resolution service for the assigned names, and it doesn't anticipate other usability issues beyond the ones any other naturally aging technology has 🕰️.

Process of identifier assignment:

the NFC Forum will provide procedures for registering each class of resource it maintains 📋. Each resource may have three types of registration activities:

1. Registered names associated with NFC Forum specifications or services;
2. Registration of names or resource classes for other entities;
3. Name models for use in experimental purposes.

Process for identifier resolution:

the namespace is not listed with a Resolution Discovery System (RDS), and that's not relevant here 🙈.

Rules for Lexical Equivalence:

no special considerations here. The rules for lexical equivalence in [RFC2141] apply ✨.

Conformance with URN Syntax:

no special considerations ✅.

Validation mechanism:

none specified. URN assignment and registration will be handled by procedures implemented to support NFC Forum activities 🛠️.

Scope:

Global 🌍

---

Part 1 of 2. Part 2 picks up with Section 3 (Examples) and carries on through the rest of the doc 🦋.

Intellectual Property ✨

Okay bestie, this part is the legal stuff, but it's still lowkey important 💅. The IETF doesn't take a side on whether any Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) someone claims over the tech in this document are valid, or how far they reach. It also doesn't say it went looking for any of those rights itself 🙈. If you want the rules on IPR in RFC documents, check out BCP 78 and BCP 79 📚.

Want copies of IPR disclosures sent to the IETF Secretariat, or promises of licenses? Those live in the IETF's online IPR repository at http://www.ietf.org/ipr 🔍. Same goes for anyone who tried to get a general license or permission to use those proprietary rights as an implementer or user of this spec.

And if you know about a copyright, patent, patent application, or other proprietary right that might cover tech you'd need to build this standard? The IETF wants to hear from you 🫶. Send it to ietf-ipr@ietf.org. Main character energy for sure ✨.

---

Acknowledgement 🌸

Quick shoutout to whoever's funding the RFC Editor function right now: that's the Internet Society 💜. Thank you for keeping the lights on 🧚.