RFC 2434 (rfc2434) - Page 2 of 11
Guidelines for Writing an IANA Considerations Section in RFCs
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
RFC 2434 Guidelines for IANA Considerations October 1998 Table of Contents Status of this Memo.......................................... 1 1. Introduction............................................. 2 2. Issues To Consider....................................... 3 3. Registration maintenance................................. 6 4. What To Put In Documents................................. 7 5. Applicability to Past and Future RFCs.................... 8 6. Security Considerations.................................. 8 7. Acknowledgments.......................................... 9 8. References............................................... 9 9. Authors' Addresses....................................... 10 10. Full Copyright Statement................................. 11 1. Introduction Many protocols make use of fields that contain constants and other well-known values (e.g., the Protocol field in the IP header [IP] or MIME types in mail messages [MIME-REG]). Even after a protocol has been defined and deployment has begun, new values may need to be assigned (e.g., a new option type in DHCP [DHCP] or a new encryption or authentication algorithm for IPSec [IPSEC]). To insure that such fields have consistent values and interpretations in different implementations, their assignment must be administered by a central authority. For IETF protocols, that role is provided by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). In this document, we call the set of possible values for such a field a "name space"; its actual content may be a name, a number or another kind of value. The assignment of a specific value to a name space is called an assigned number (or assigned value). Each assignment of a number in a name space is called a registration. In order for the IANA to manage a given name space prudently, it needs guidelines describing the conditions under which new values should be assigned. This document provides guidelines to authors on what sort of text should be added to their documents, and reviews issues that should be considered in formulating an appropriate policy for assigning numbers to name spaces. Not all name spaces require centralized administration. In some cases, it is possible to delegate a name space in such a way that further assignments can be made independently and with no further (central) coordination. In the Domain Name System, for example, the IANA only deals with assignments at the higher-levels, while subdomains are administered by the organization to which the space has been delegated. As another example, Object Identifiers (OIDs) as defined by the ITU are also delegated [ASSIGNED]. When a name space Narten & Alvestrand Best Current Practice
