Network Working Group P. Barker Request for Comments: 1617 University College London RARE Technical Report: 11 S. Kille Obsoletes: 1384 ISODE Consortium Category: Informational T. Lenggenhager SWITCH May 1994 Naming and Structuring Guidelines for X.500 Directory Pilots Status of this Memo This memo provides information for the Internet community. This memo does not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this memo is unlimited. Abstract Deployment of a Directory will benefit from following certain guidelines. This document defines a number of naming and structuring guidelines focused on White Pages usage. Alignment to these guidelines is recommended for directory pilots. The final version of this document will replace RFC 1384. Table of Contents 1. Introduction 2 2. DIT Structure 3 2.1. Structure Rules 3 2.2. The Top Level of the DIT 3 2.3. Countries 4 2.4. Organisations 5 2.4.1. Directory Manager, Postmaster & Secretary 5 2.4.2. Depth of tree 6 2.4.3. Real World Organisational Structure 7 2.5. Multi-National Organisations 7 2.5.1. The Multi-National as a Single Entity 7 2.5.2. The Multi-National as a Loose Confederation 8 2.5.3. Loosely Linked DIT Sub-Trees 9 2.5.4. Summary of Advantages and Disadvantages of the Above Approaches 9 3. Naming Style 10 3.1. Multi-Component Relative Distinguished Names 11 3.2. National Guidelines for Naming 11 3.3. Naming Organisation and Organisational Unit Names 11 3.4. Naming Human Users 12 3.5. Application Entities 13 RARE Working Group on Network Applications Support (WG-NAP)