The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical and distributed naming system for computers, services, and other resources in the Internet or other Internet Protocol (IP) networks. It associates various information with domain names assigned to each of the associated entities. Most prominently, it translates readily memorized domain names to the numerical IP addresses needed for locating and identifying computer services and devices with the underlying network protocols. The Domain Name System has been an essential component of the functionality of the Internet since 1985.
The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is a network management protocol used on Internet Protocol (IP) networks for automatically assigning IP addresses and other communication parameters to devices connected to the network using a client–server architecture.
A Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) is a unique sequence of characters that identifies a logical or physical resource used by web technologies. URIs may be used to identify anything, including real-world objects, such as people and places, concepts, or information resources such as web pages and books. Some URIs provide a means of locating and retrieving information resources on a network ; these are Uniform Resource Locators (URLs). A URL provides the location of the resource. A URI identifies the resource by name at the specified location or URL. Other URIs provide only a unique name, without a means of locating or retrieving the resource or information about it, these are Uniform Resource Names (URNs). The web technologies that use URIs are not limited to web browsers. URIs are used to identify anything described using the Resource Description Framework (RDF), for example, concepts that are part of an ontology defined using the Web Ontology Language (OWL), and people who are described using the Friend of a Friend vocabulary would each have an individual URI.
A name server is a computer application that implements a network service for providing responses to queries against a directory service. It translates an often humanly meaningful, text-based identifier to a system-internal, often numeric identification or addressing component. This service is performed by the server in response to a service protocol request.
Telephone number mapping is a system of unifying the international telephone number system of the public switched telephone network with the Internet addressing and identification name spaces. Internationally, telephone numbers are systematically organized by the E.164 standard, while the Internet uses the Domain Name System (DNS) for linking domain names to IP addresses and other resource information. Telephone number mapping systems provide facilities to determine applicable Internet communications servers responsible for servicing a given telephone number using DNS queries.
Zero-configuration networking (zeroconf) is a set of technologies that automatically creates a usable computer network based on the Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) when computers or network peripherals are interconnected. It does not require manual operator intervention or special configuration servers. Without zeroconf, a network administrator must set up network services, such as Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) and Domain Name System (DNS), or configure each computer's network settings manually.
A Uniform Resource Name (URN) is a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) that uses the urn scheme. URNs are globally unique persistent identifiers assigned within defined namespaces so they will be available for a long period of time, even after the resource which they identify ceases to exist or becomes unavailable. URNs cannot be used to directly locate an item and need not be resolvable, as they are simply templates that another parser may use to find an item.
A digital object identifier (DOI) is a persistent identifier or handle used to uniquely identify various objects, standardized by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). DOIs are an implementation of the Handle System; they also fit within the URI system. They are widely used to identify academic, professional, and government information, such as journal articles, research reports, data sets, and official publications. DOIs have also been used to identify other types of information resources, such as commercial videos.
The Internationalized Resource Identifier (IRI) is an internet protocol standard which builds on the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) protocol by greatly expanding the set of permitted characters. It was defined by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in 2005 in RFC 3987. While URIs are limited to a subset of the US-ASCII character set, IRIs may additionally contain most characters from the Universal Character Set, including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Cyrillic characters.
A Name Authority Pointer (NAPTR) is a type of resource record in the Domain Name System of the Internet.
The Dynamic Delegation Discovery System (DDDS) is an algorithm for applying string transformation rules to application-unique strings to extract specific syntax elements. It is used for finding information, such as authoritative domain name servers, for Uniform Resource Identifiers and Uniform Resource Names. An earlier specification applied only to URNs, and was called the Resolver Discovery Service (RDS).
In IETF specifications, a Uniform Resource Characteristic (URC) is a string of characters representing the metadata of a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), a string identifying a Web resource. URC metadata was envisioned to include sufficient information to support persistent identifiers, such as mapping a Uniform Resource Name (URN) to a current Uniform Resource Locator (URL). URCs were proposed as a specification in the mid-1990s, but were never adopted.
Peer-to-peer SIP (P2P-SIP) is an implementation of a distributed voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) or instant messaging communications application using a peer-to-peer (P2P) architecture in which session control between communication end points is facilitated with the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP).
National Bibliography Number (NBN) is a group of publication identifier systems used by national libraries in countries such as Germany, Italy, Finland, Norway, The Netherlands and Sweden. There is no global standard for the contents of NBNs; instead, they have a country-specific format. NBNs are typically used for documents which do not have a publisher-assigned identifier such as an ISBN. They can be used to identify media archived in national libraries, such as Ph.D. theses.
An Internet Protocol Version 6 address is a numeric label that is used to identify and locate a network interface of a computer or a network node participating in a computer network using IPv6. IP addresses are included in the packet header to indicate the source and the destination of each packet. The IP address of the destination is used to make decisions about routing IP packets to other networks.
An Extensible Resource Identifier is a scheme and resolution protocol for abstract identifiers compatible with Uniform Resource Identifiers and Internationalized Resource Identifiers, developed by the XRI Technical Committee at OASIS. The goal of XRI was a standard syntax and discovery format for abstract, structured identifiers that are domain-, location-, application-, and transport-independent, so they can be shared across any number of domains, directories, and interaction protocols.
Identifiers.org is a project providing stable and perennial identifiers for data records used in the Life Sciences. The identifiers are provided in the form of Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs). Identifiers.org is also a resolving system, that relies on collections listed in the MIRIAM Registry to provide direct access to different instances of the identified records.
A Uniform Resource Locator (URL), colloquially known as an address on the Web, is a reference to a resource that specifies its location on a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it. A URL is a specific type of Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), although many people use the two terms interchangeably. URLs occur most commonly to reference web pages (HTTP/HTTPS) but are also used for file transfer (FTP), email (mailto), database access (JDBC), and many other applications.
A well-known URI is a Uniform Resource Identifier for URL path prefixes that start with /.well-known/. They are implemented in webservers so that requests to the servers for well-known services or information are available at URLs consistent well-known locations across servers.
Larry Melvin Masinter is an early internet pioneer and ACM Fellow. After attending Stanford University, he became a Principal Scientist of Xerox Artificial Intelligence Systems and author or coauthor of 26 of the Internet Engineering Task Force's Requests for Comments.
