RFC 3172 (rfc3172) - Page 1 of 8

Management Guidelines & Operational Requirements for the Address and Routing Parameter Area Domain ("arpa")

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Network Working Group                                  G. Huston, Editor
Request for Comments: 3172                                           IAB
BCP: 52                                                   September 2001
Category: Best Current Practice


          Management Guidelines & Operational Requirements for
         the Address and Routing Parameter Area Domain ("arpa")

Status of this Memo

   This document specifies an Internet Best Current Practices for the
   Internet Community, and requests discussion and suggestions for
   improvements.  Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2001).  All Rights Reserved.

Abstract

   This memo describes the management and operational requirements for
   the address and routing parameter area ("arpa") domain.  The "arpa"
   domain is used to support a class of infrastructural identifier
   spaces, providing a distributed database that translates elements of
   a structured name space derived from a protocol family to service
   names.  The efficient and reliable operation of this DNS space is
   essential to the integrity of operation of various services within
   the Internet.  The Internet Architecture Board (IAB) has the
   responsibility, in cooperation with the Internet Corporation for
   Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), to manage the "arpa" domain.
   This document describes the principles used by the IAB in undertaking
   this role.

1. Introduction

   The Domain Name System (DNS) [1] [2] is predominately used to
   translate a structured textual identifier into a protocol-specific
   value.  It uses the structure embedded within a hierarchical
   identifier space to create a distributed database, where every node
   within the database corresponds to a node within the name structure.
   The most prevalent role of the DNS is to store a set of name to
   address translations, allowing a domain name to be translated to an
   IP address.  The DNS is also used to store a number of other
   translations from hierarchically structured identifier spaces into
   target values of various types.





Huston                   Best Current Practice
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