RFC6061

Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) B. Rosen Request for Comments: 6061 NeuStar Category: Informational January 2011 ISSN: 2070-1721

Uniform Resource Name (URN) Namespace for the National Emergency Number

                       Association (NENA)

Abstract

This document describes the Namespace Identifier (NID) "nena" for Uniform Resource Name (URN) resources published by the National Emergency Number Association (NENA). NENA defines and manages resources that utilize this URN model. Management activities for these and other resource types are provided by the NENA Registry System (NRS).

Status of This Memo

This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is published for informational purposes.

This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has received public review and has been approved for publication by the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Not all documents approved by the IESG are a candidate for any level of Internet Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 5741.

Information about the current status of this document, any errata, and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6061.

Copyright Notice

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

This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License.

Introduction

The National Emergency Number Association (NENA) is currently in the process of setting standards, processes, and procedures for the use of an IP-based Emergency Services IP Network (ESInet) for all public safety entities in North America. Some of the solutions being developed by NENA require XML namespaces that are managed so that they are unique and persistent. To assure that the uniqueness is absolute, the registration of a specific Uniform Resource Name (URN) RFC2141 Namespace ID (NID) for use by NENA is required. This document defines and registers such a namespace in accordance with RFC3406.

URN Specification for "nena" NID

Namespace ID: nena

Registration information:

  registration version number: 1

  registration date: 2010-10-13

Declared registrant of the namespace:

  Registering organization
     Name:       National Emergency Number Association (NENA)
     Address:    4350 North Fairfax Drive, Suite 750
                 Arlington, VA  22203-1695

Designated contact:

  Role:    NENA Registry Services Administrator
  Email:   [email protected]

Declaration of syntactic structure:

  The Namespace Specific String (NSS) of all URNs that use the
  "nena" NID will have the following structure:
     {NENAclass}:{ClassSpecificString}

The "NENAclass" conforms to the URN syntax requirements RFC2141 and defines a specific class of resource type. Each class will have a specific labeling scheme that is covered by "ClassSpecificString", which also conforms to the naming requirements of RFC2141.

NENA maintains a naming authority, the National Emergency Number Association (NENA) Registry System (NRS), that will manage the assignment of "NENAclass" and the specific registration values assigned for each class. Other NENA standards documents will define the "ClassSpecificStrings" for a given "NENAclass".

Relevant ancillary documentation:

  The National Emergency Number Association Registry System (NRS)
  provides information on the registered resources and the
  registrations for each.  More information about the NRS and the
  registration activities and procedures to be followed are defined
  in "NENA Registry System Standard", NENA 70-001 [NENA70-001],
  which is available at http://www.nena.org/.

Identifier uniqueness considerations:

  The NRS will manage resources using the "nena" NID and will be the
  authority for managing the resources and subsequent strings
  associated.  The NRS shall ensure the uniqueness of all nena URNs
  by checking such names against the list of existing namespace
  names, as documented in NENA 70-001 [NENA70-001].

Identifier persistence considerations:

  The NRS will provide clear documentation of the registered uses of
  the "nena" NID.  The NRS will establish a registry for
  "NENAclass", as defined in NENA08-003 [NENA08-003].  Each
  "NENAclass" will have a separate description in the registry and
  may have its own sub-registry.  In particular, new "NENAclass"
  registry entries will require a full NENA Technical Standard
  document.

The NRS will maintain a website at a stable address that provides XML and text renderings of the urn:nena registry.

Process of identifier assignment:

  The NRS processes and procedures for identifier assignment are
  documented in NENA 07-001 [NENA70-001].  The registry that will
  control the urn:nena namespace is defined in NENA 08-003
  [NENA08-003].  In particular, assignments to the "NENAclass"
  registry will require a NENA Technical Standard document.
  Subregistries for particular "NENAclasses" may be established by
  such technical standards.  Subregistries may be defined to have
  more liberal management policies as defined in NENA 70-001
  [NENA70-001], but must be NRS managed and will not be permitted to
  be delegated to any other organization or registry.  Thus, the NRS
  will manage the entire urn:nena tree.

Process for identifier resolution:

  The namespace is not currently listed with a Resolution Discovery
  System (RDS), but nothing about the namespace prohibits the future
  definition of appropriate resolution methods or listing with
  an RDS.

Rules for lexical equivalence:

  No special considerations; the rules for lexical equivalence of
  RFC2141 apply.

Conformance with URN syntax:

  No special considerations.

Validation mechanism:

  None specified.  URN assignment will be handled by procedures
  implemented in support of NENA activities.

Scope:

  Global

Examples

The following examples are representative URNs that could be assigned by the NRS. They may not be the actual strings that would be assigned.

NENAresource "psaproute" Syntax: "urn:nena:emergencyresponders:<responder name>" ResourceSpecificString: simple string with name of responder,

                       defined in a subregistry

Use: Defines the URN to be used for queries to an NG9-1-1 Emergency Call Routing Function that provides URIs for responding agencies.

Examples:

  urn:nena:emergencyresponders:ambulance
  urn:nena:emergencyresponders:fire
  urn:nena:emergencyresponders:police
  urn:nena:emergencyresponders:poison
  urn:nena:emergencyresponders:coastguard
  urn:nena:emergencyresponders:marine

Namespace Considerations

The National Emergency Number Association has developed standards for emergency calling in North America for several decades. NENA is developing a variety of applications and services using Internet protocols built upon IETF standards. Some of these services require that supporting information (e.g., data descriptions, attributes, etc.) be fully specified. For proper operation, descriptions of the needed supporting information must exist and be available in a unique, reliable, and persistent manner. These dependencies provide the basis of the need for namespaces, in one form or another, and will enable NENA to define URNs that are to assign cleaner, more general, more permanent, more reliable, and more controllable namespace names related to NENA standards, while keeping URNs defined by NENA properly separate from the IETF-defined URNs.

As the National Emergency Number Association work is ongoing and covers many technical areas, the possibility of binding to various other namespace repositories has been deemed impractical. Each object or description, as defined in NENA, could possibly be related to multiple different namespaces, so further conflicts of association could occur. Thus, the intent is to utilize the National Emergency Number Association Registry System, operated by NENA, as the naming authority for NENA-defined objects and descriptions.

Community Considerations

The North American public safety organizations will benefit from publication of this namespace by having permanent and reliable URNs to be used with protocols defined by NENA. The objects and descriptions required for services defined by NENA are generally available for use by other organizations. The National Emergency

Number Association will provide access and support for name requests by these organizations within the constraints of the defined NRS processes and the specific urn:nena registry and subregistries. This support can be enabled in a timely and responsive fashion as new objects and descriptions are produced. These will be enabled in a fashion similar to current IANA processes, as documented in NENA70-001 [NENA70-001].

The NRS establishes registries when called for in a NENA Technical Standard. Such standards must provide the NRS with clear and concise instructions on creating and maintaining such registries. Defined management policies include "NENA Technical Standard Required", "NENA Document Required", "Expert Review", and "First Come First Served", which correspond to similar IANA management policies. NENA is establishing a website that provides controlled entry of new registries and entries in registries, and automatically produces HTML and XML descriptions of registry contents that are used by vendors and other consumers of the content.

Security Considerations

There are no additional security considerations other than those normally associated with the use and resolution of URNs in general.

IANA Considerations

This document adds a new entry in the URN Namespaces registry. The namespace is "nena". The defining document is this RFC. The entry can be found in the Uniform Resource Names (URN) Namespaces registry available from http://www.iana.org and any associated mirrors.

Acknowledgements

The author thanks Alfred Hoenes (TR-Sys) for his careful reading and extensive comments and suggestions. The author also acknowledges that the text from RFC4358 formed the basis of this document.

References

Normative References

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

Informative References

[NENA08-003] NENA, "Detailed Functional and Interface Specification

              for the NENA i3 Solution - Stage 3", NENA Standard
              08-003, September 2010.

[NENA70-001] NENA, "NENA Registry System Standard", NENA

              Standard 70-001, September 2009.

RFC3406 Daigle, L., van Gulik, D., Iannella, R., and P.

              Faltstrom, "Uniform Resource Names (URN) Namespace
              Definition Mechanisms", BCP 66, RFC 3406,
              October 2002.

RFC4358 Smith, D., "A Uniform Resource Name (URN) Namespace

              for the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA)", RFC 4358,
              January 2006.

Author's Address

Brian Rosen NeuStar, Inc. 470 Conrad Dr. Mars, PA 16046 US

EMail: [email protected]