Naming Things with Hashes
RFC 6920, “Naming Things with Hashes”, is a Proposed Standard document published in April 2013 by S. Farrell, D. Kutscher, C. Dannewitz, B. Ohlman, A. Keranen, P. Hallam-Baker. The canonical text is published by the RFC Editor.
Abstract
This document defines a set of ways to identify a thing (a digital object in this case) using the output from a hash function. It specifies a new URI scheme for this purpose, a way to map these to HTTP URLs, and binary and human-speakable formats for these names. The various formats are designed to support, but not require, a strong link to the referenced object, such that the referenced object may be authenticated to the same degree as the reference to it. The reason for this work is to standardise current uses of hash outputs in URLs and to support new information-centric applications and other uses of hash outputs in protocols.
What “Proposed Standard” means
An entry-level standards-track specification: stable, peer-reviewed and a solid basis for implementation, though it may still evolve before becoming an Internet Standard.
The canonical text of RFC 6920 is hosted at rfc-editor.org. Available in TXT,HTML.
- RFC 6919 Further Key Words for Use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels
- RFC 6921 Design Considerations for Faster-Than-Light Communication
- RFC 6918 Formally Deprecating Some ICMPv4 Message Types
- RFC 6922 The application/sql Media Type
- RFC 6917 Media Resource Brokering
- RFC 6923 MPLS Transport Profile Identifiers Following ITU-T Conventions
- RFC 6916 Algorithm Agility Procedure for the Resource Public Key Infrastructure
- RFC 6924 Registration of Second-Level URN Namespaces under "ietf"