About this document

This document defines the syntax used by the World-Wide Web initiative to encode the names and addresses of objects on the internet. The web is considered to include objects accessed using an extendable number of protocols, existing, invented for the web itself, or to be invented in the future. Access instructions for an individual object under a given protcol are encoded into forms of address string. Other protocols allow the use of objects names of various forms. In order to abstract the idea of a generic object, the web needs the concepts of the universal set of objects, and the universal set of names or addresses of objects.

A Universal Resource Identifier (URI) is a member of this universal set of names in registered name spaces and addresses refering to registered protocols. The URL specfication defines a set of mappings onto URIs for addresses of objects accessed existing internet protocols onto URI. The URN debate attempts to define a namespace (and presumably resolution protocols) for persistent object names. This areas is not addressed by this document, which is written in order to document existing practice and provide a reference point for URL and URN discussions.

It is therefore issued under the required "informational RFC" disclaimer.

The world-wide web protocols are discussed on the mailing listwww-talk-request@info.cern.ch and the newsgroup comp.infosystems.www. The Mailing list uri-request@bunyip.com has discussion related partiularly to the URI issue. The author may be contacted as timbl@info.cern.ch.