Re: iSCSI Naming: iqn format specification

[Glen Turner <glen.turner@aarnet.edu.au>]

Mark Bakke wrote:
> 
>    - Not everyone has or needs one for other purposes; might cause
>      extra load on IANA-assigned name space, especially if end users,
>      researchers, or university projects start applying for them.
>      In the past year, IANA has assigned about 3,000 enterprise
>      numbers.

I'd suggest altering the syntax to allow for OIDs, not just
IANA-assigned enterprise numbers.  Otherwise people with ISO-
assigned numbers are going to end up holding multiple OID
allocations, which begins to be administratively nightmareish.

This also fixes the "load on IANA" problem.

As a real example, OIDs are required for LDAP schema and each
organisation can be expected to have a unique LDAP scehema (such
as Example Corp having an examplePerson schema).  To reduce the
load on allocation bodies, AARNet already sub-allocates OIDs to
Australian universities out of its ISO allocated space for use
in universities' private LDAP schema and any private SNMP MIBs.

Because of the OID/LDAP linkage, I'd expect DNS registries to
be the ultimate allocators of OIDs.

>    ... Since a component of a
>    DNS name cannot start with a digit, there is no risk of confusing
>    the two.

Not so, this requirement was removed some time ago.  Consider
http://www.3com.com/.

It would thus be better to list the namespace explicitly rather
than make any assumptions about DNS names.  Especially as DNS
naming is going to go through some major changes to allow for
multilingual names.

>  - Less transcribable - OUI normally expressed as six-digit hex
>    number; schemes such as MAC address and EUI-64 are expressed
>    as 12 to 16-digit numbers.

OUIs have a OID form, so the OID form should should be either be required
or forbidden to prevent confusion.

It probably best to treat the OUI as a 12 or 16 hexdigit number.
Using just the OUI is problematic for huge organisations, as they
then need to track iSCSI namespace use internally.  Assigning
a "MAC address" (OUI + 3 octets) to the iSCSI team is easy
administratively.

Finally, we should use the URI name and format for the namespace
where a URI format exists.  This is simply for consistency.

For example:
   backwardsdns:au.edu.example.faculty
   oid:1.32.43.5.3.2.43.2.2.34
   oui:2e319c65786e

Regards,
Glen

-- 
 Glen Turner                                 Network Engineer
 (08) 8303 3936      Australian Academic and Research Network
 glen.turner@aarnet.edu.au          http://www.aarnet.edu.au/
--
 The revolution will not be televised, it will be digitised