RFC 6289

RFC 6289: A Uniform Resource Name (URN) Namespace for CableLabs ✨

okay bestie, the header info first 💅 This is RFC 6289, from June 2011. It's an Informational doc (not a Standards Track spec), it was written by Eduardo Cardona, Sumanth Channabasappa, and Jean-Francois Mule from CableLabs, and it's in the RFC series under ISSN 2070-1721. It doesn't obsolete or update any other RFCs. 🦋

Abstract

This doc defines the Namespace Identifier (NID) cablelabs for Uniform Resource Names (URNs). It's used to identify stuff published by Cable Television Laboratories, Inc. (CableLabs) 🎀 CableLabs makes and manages resources that use this URN model, and the manager of the CableLabs' Assigned Names and Numbers registry handles management for these and other resource types. 💖

Status of This Memo

Real talk, this doc isn't an Internet Standards Track spec. It's published just for info 🌸

It is an IETF product, though, which means it reflects the consensus of the IETF community. It got public review and was approved for publication by the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Being IESG-approved doesn't automatically make something a candidate for any level of Internet Standard, though. See Section 2 of RFC 5741 for that 🧚

For the current status, any errata, and how to send feedback, check http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6289 ✨

Copyright Notice

Copyright (c) 2011 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved. 🌈

This doc is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) as they stand on the publication date. Please read those carefully, because they spell out your rights and restrictions for this doc 👑 Any Code Components pulled out of this doc have to include the Simplified BSD License text, as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions, and they come with no warranty, as the Simplified BSD License describes.

Heads up, this doc might include material from IETF Documents or IETF Contributions that were published or made publicly available before November 10, 2008. The people who control the copyright in some of that material might not have given the IETF Trust permission to allow modifications outside the IETF Standards Process. So unless you get an adequate license from those copyright holders, you can't modify this doc outside the IETF Standards Process, and you can't make derivative works of it outside that process either. The exceptions are formatting it for publication as an RFC or translating it into languages other than English 💀

Table of Contents

1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2.  URN Specification for CableLabs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3.  Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4.  Namespace Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
5.  Community Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
6.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
7.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
8.  Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
9.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
  9.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
  9.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

1. Introduction ✨

CableLabs is a non-profit R&D consortium. Its whole thing is pushing new cable telecom tech forward and helping its cable operator members fold those advances into their business goals 💅 Inside CableLabs, spec work is organized into projects like DOCSIS(R), PacketCable(TM), and OpenCable(TM), and the technical work happens in focus teams. Vendors, manufacturers, and cable operator members are all invited to join those focus teams and help write the technical specs 🫶

Sometimes CableLabs specs need identifiers from a managed namespace, so they stay unique and persistent. To make that uniqueness absolute, this doc specifies registering a URN [RFC2141] Namespace Identifier (NID) for CableLabs to use. The registration follows the NID registration process in [RFC3406] to the letter 🔥

2. URN Specification for CableLabs 🎀

Here's the full registration info, the way it's written in the doc:

Namespace ID:

cablelabs

Registration information:

registration version number: 1
registration date: 2011-04-18

Declared registrant of the namespace:

Registering organization
   Name: Cable Television Laboratories, Inc.
   Address: 858 Coal Creek Circle, Louisville, CO 80027, USA
Designated contact
   Role: Manager, Standards
   Email: ietf_standards@cablelabs.com

Declaration of syntactic structure:

The Namespace Specific String (NSS) of every URN that uses the "cablelabs" NID follows this structure 🧚

{CLclass}:{CLClassSpecificString}

"CLclass" is a US-ASCII string that follows the URN syntax rules in [RFC2141], and it defines one specific class of resource type. Each class gets its own labeling scheme, which is covered by "CLClassSpecificString". That one also has to follow the naming rules of [RFC2141] 💖

CableLabs keeps the CableLabs' Assigned Names and Numbers [CANN] spec, which lists the resource classes CableLabs assigns and the specific registration values for each class ✨

Relevant ancillary documentation:

CableLabs publishes info about registered resources in the CableLabs' Assigned Names and Numbers specification ([CANN]) 🌸

Identifier uniqueness considerations:

CableLabs manages resource classes under the "cablelabs" NID, and it's the authority for managing resources and the strings that come after them. CableLabs is expected to guarantee the uniqueness of the strings themselves, or it may give secondary responsibility for certain defined resources to someone else 👑

CableLabs could allow experimental type values for testing only. Heads up though, using experimental types may cause collisions, since multiple users could use the same values for resources and specific strings 🙈

Identifier persistence considerations:

CableLabs will update the CableLabs' Assigned Names and Numbers specification ([CANN]) to document the registered resources that use the "cablelabs" NID 🦋

Process of identifier assignment:

CableLabs will provide registration procedures for each type of resource it maintains. Each resource may have three types of registration activities:

1. Registered values tied to CableLabs documents or services
2. Registration of values or sub-trees for other entities
3. Name models for experimental purposes

Process for identifier resolution:

The namespace isn't listed with a resolution discovery system, so this doesn't apply to this URN registration 🌈

Rules for lexical equivalence:

Nothing special here. The rules for lexical equivalence in [RFC2141] apply 💅

Conformance with URN syntax:

No special considerations ✨

Validation mechanism:

None specified. URN assignment gets handled by the procedures that support CableLabs activities 🫶

Scope:

Global 🌍

3. Example 🦋

Here's a hypothetical URN that CableLabs could assign:

urn:cablelabs:packetcable-example:ue:rst-sample

This example defines the URN for User Equipment (UE) that conforms to the sample Residential SIP Telephony (RST) application in CableLabs' PacketCable RST specification suite 📞✨

4. Namespace Considerations 💜

CableLabs writes specs that may need data models. URN namespaces are the key tools for keeping those data model definitions reliable, persistent, and unique 🔥

URNs should also help spec authors keep different versions of URNs, plus the dependencies between URNs across different versions of CableLabs specs, if they want to do that 🧚

5. Community Considerations 🎀

Anyone who builds or uses CableLabs specs, or runs cable industry deployments, wins from this namespace. It gives them consistent, reliable names for XML namespaces, schema locations, and similar identifiers for physical data models published in CableLabs specs 💖

CableLabs specs are publicly available, and they're licensed to manufacturers on a nondiscriminatory basis. CableLabs will keep the allocation of resources for the "cablelabs" NID inside this spec: "CableLabs' Assigned Names and Numbers" [CANN], which is publicly viewable. CableLabs will also maintain the related specs where those registered resources get referenced or used 🌸

6. IANA Considerations 🌈

This doc adds a new "cablelabs" entry to the urn-namespaces registry, and this doc is the one that defines it. You can find the entry in the "Uniform Resource Names (URN) Namespaces" registry on the IANA site (http://www.iana.org) and any associated mirrors 👑

7. Security Considerations 💀

Okay, serious moment 🫢 There are no additional security considerations beyond the ones that come with using and resolving URNs in general. Those are covered in [RFC1737], [RFC2141], and [RFC3406]. Go read them before you ship anything with this namespace, bestie, because security is not a vibe you can skip 🔒

8. Acknowledgements 🫶

The authors want to thank Alfred Hoenes, Ted Hardie, and Peter Saint-Andre for their useful comments and suggestions. They also acknowledge that the text from [RFC4358] formed the basis for the first version of this doc 💜

9. References ✨

9.1. Normative References

[RFC2141]  Moats, R., "URN Syntax", RFC 2141, May 1997.

[RFC3406]  Daigle, L., van Gulik, D., Iannella, R., and P. Faltstrom,
           "Uniform Resource Names (URN) Namespace Definition
           Mechanisms", BCP 66, RFC 3406, October 2002.

9.2. Informative References

[CANN]     Cable Television Laboratories Inc., "CableLabs' Assigned
           Names and Numbers", 2011,
           <http://www.cablelabs.com/specifications/cpSpecs.html>.

[RFC1737]  Sollins, K. and L. Masinter, "Functional Requirements for
           Uniform Resource Names", RFC 1737, December 1994.

[RFC4358]  Smith, D., "A Uniform Resource Name (URN) Namespace for
           the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA)", RFC 4358, January 2006.

Authors' Addresses 🧚

The three authors are all at CableLabs, 858 Coal Creek Circle, Louisville, CO 80027, USA. Here are their contact details:

Eduardo Cardona
CableLabs
858 Coal Creek Circle
Louisville, CO  80027
USA

Phone: +1 303 661 3375
EMail: e.cardona@cablelabs.com


Sumanth Channabasappa
CableLabs
858 Coal Creek Circle
Louisville, CO  80027
USA

Phone: +1 303 661 3307
EMail: sumanth@cablelabs.com


Jean-Francois Mule
CableLabs
858 Coal Creek Circle
Louisville, CO  80027
USA

Phone: +1 303 661 9100
EMail: jf.mule@cablelabs.com