CoRE Resource DirectoryARM150 Rose OrchardSan Jose95134USA+1-408-203-9434zach.shelby@arm.comSmartThings665 Clyde AvenueMountain View94043USA+1-707-502-5136Michael.Koster@smartthings.comUniversitaet Bremen TZIPostfach 330440BremenD-28359Germany+49-421-218-63921cabo@tzi.orgconsultant+31-492474673 (Netherlands), +33-966015248 (France)consultancy@vanderstok.orgwww.vanderstok.orgHollandstr. 12/41020Austria+43-664-9790639christian@amsuess.com
Internet
CoRECoRE, Web Linking, Resource Discovery, Resource DirectoryIn many M2M applications, direct discovery of resources is not practical
due to sleeping nodes, disperse networks, or networks where multicast traffic
is inefficient. These problems can be solved by employing an entity called
a Resource Directory (RD), which hosts registrations of resources held on
other servers, allowing lookups to be performed for those resources. This
document specifies the web interfaces that a Resource Directory supports for web servers to discover the RD and to register, maintain, lookup
and remove resource descriptions. Furthermore, new link attributes useful
in conjunction with an RD are defined.The work on Constrained RESTful Environments (CoRE) aims at realizing the
REST architecture in a suitable form for the most constrained nodes (e.g.,
8-bit microcontrollers with limited RAM and ROM) and networks (e.g. 6LoWPAN).
CoRE is aimed at machine-to-machine (M2M) applications such as smart energy
and building automation.The discovery of resources offered by a constrained server is very important
in machine-to-machine applications where there are no humans in the loop and
static interfaces result in fragility. The discovery of resources provided by
an HTTP Web Server is typically called Web Linking . The use of
Web Linking for the description and discovery of resources hosted by
constrained web servers is specified by the CoRE Link Format
. However, only describes how to discover
resources from the web server that hosts them by querying
/.well-known/core. In many M2M scenarios, direct discovery of resources is
not practical due to sleeping nodes, disperse networks, or networks where
multicast traffic is inefficient. These problems can be solved by employing
an entity called a Resource Directory (RD), which hosts registrations of
resources held on other servers, allowing lookups to be performed for those
resources.This document specifies the web interfaces that a Resource Directory supports for web servers to discover the RD and to register, maintain, lookup
and remove resource descriptions. Furthermore, new link attributes useful in
conjunction with a Resource Directory are defined. Although the examples in
this document show the use of these interfaces with CoAP , they
can be applied in an equivalent manner to HTTP .The key words “MUST”, “MUST NOT”, “REQUIRED”, “SHALL”, “SHALL NOT”,
“SHOULD”, “SHOULD NOT”, “RECOMMENDED”, “NOT RECOMMENDED”, “MAY”, and “OPTIONAL”
in this
document are to be interpreted as described in . The
term “byte” is used in its now customary sense as a synonym for “octet”.This specification requires readers to be familiar with all the terms and
concepts that are discussed in , and . Readers should
also be familiar with the terms and concepts discussed in . To
describe the REST interfaces defined in this specification, the URI Template
format is used .This specification makes use of the following additional terminology:
The expression “a URI-reference is resolved against a base URI” is used
to describe the process of Section 5.2. Noteworthy corner cases are
that if the URI-reference is a (full) URI and resolved against any base URI, that gives the original full URI, and
that resolving an empty URI reference gives the base URI without any fragment identifier.
A web entity that stores information about web resources and implements the
REST interfaces defined in this specification for registration and lookup
of those resources.
In the context of a Resource Directory, a sector is a
logical grouping of endpoints.The abbreviation “d=” is used for the sector in query parameters for
compatibility with deployed implementations.
Endpoint (EP) is a term used to describe a web server or client in .
In the context of this specification an endpoint is used to describe a
web server that registers resources to the Resource Directory. An endpoint
is identified by its endpoint name, which is included during registration,
and has a unique name within the associated sector of the registration.
The Base URI of a Registration is a URI that typically gives scheme and
authority information about an Endpoint. The Registration Base URI is provided at registration time, and is used by the Resource Directory to
resolve relative references of the registration into URIs.
The target of a link is the destination address (URI) of the link. It is sometimes identified with “href=”, or displayed as <target>. Relative targets need resolving with respect to the Base URI (section 5.2 of ).This use of the term Target is consistent with ’s use of the term.
The context of a link is the source address (URI) of the link,
and describes which resource is linked to the target.
A link’s context is made explicit in serialized links as the “anchor=” attribute.This use of the term Context is consistent with ’s use of the term.
A resource in the Resource Directory (RD) containing registration resources.
A resource in the RD that contains information about an Endpoint and its links.
Commissioning Tool (CT) is a device that assists during the installation of the
network by assigning values to parameters, naming endpoints and groups, or adapting
the installation to the needs of the applications.
Registrant-ep is the endpoint that is registered into the RD. The registrant-ep can register itself, or a CT registers the registrant-ep.
Resource Directory Address Option.For several operations, interface descriptions are given in list form;
those describe the operation participants, request codes, URIs, content formats and outcomes.
Those templates contain normative content in their
Interaction, Method, URI Template and URI Template Variables sections
as well as the details of the Success condition.
The additional sections
on options like Content-Format and on Failure codes
give typical cases that an implementation of the RD should deal with.
Those serve to illustrate the typical responses
to readers who are not yet familiar with all the details of CoAP based interfaces;
they do not limit what a server may respond under atypical circumstances.The Resource Directory is primarily a tool to make discovery operations more
efficient than querying /.well-known/core on all connected devices, or across
boundaries that would be limiting those operations.It provides a cache (in the high-level sense, not as defined in
/) of data that could otherwise only be obtained by
directly querying the /.well-known/core resource on the target device, or by
accessing those resources with a multicast request.Only information SHOULD be stored in the resource
directory that is discoverable from querying the described device’s
/.well-known/core resource directly.Data in the resource directory can only be provided by the
device which hosts those data or a dedicated Commissioning Tool (CT).
These CTs are thought to act on behalf of endpoints too constrained, or generally
unable, to present that information themselves. No other client can modify data
in the resource directory. Changes in the Resource Directory do not propagate automatically back to the web server from where the links originated.The resource directory architecture is illustrated in . A
Resource Directory (RD) is used as a repository for Web Links
describing resources hosted on other web servers, also called endpoints
(EP).
An endpoint is a web server associated with a scheme, IP address and port. A physical node may host one or more endpoints. The
RD implements a set of REST interfaces for endpoints to register and maintain
sets of Web Links (called resource directory registration entries), and for endpoints to
lookup resources from the RD. An RD can be logically segmented by the use of Sectors.
This information hierarchy is shown in .A mechanism to discover an RD using CoRE Link Format is defined.Registration entries
in the RD are soft state and need to be periodically refreshed.An endpoint uses specific interfaces to register, update and remove a resource
directory registration entry. It is also possible for an RD to fetch Web Links
from endpoints and add them as resource directory registration entries.At the first registration of a set of entries, a “registration resource” is created,
the location of which is returned to the registering endpoint. The registering
endpoint uses this registration resource to manage the contents of registration entries.A lookup interface for discovering any of the Web Links held in the RD is
provided using the CoRE Link Format.A Registrant-EP MAY keep concurrent registrations to more than one RD at the same time
if explicitly configured to do so,
but that is not expected to be supported by typical EP implementations.
Any such registrations are independent of each other.
The usual expectation when multiple discovery mechanisms or addresses are configured
is that they constitute a fallback path for a single registration.The Entity-Relationship (ER) models shown in and model the contents of /.well-known/core and the resource directory respectively, with entity-relationship diagrams . Entities (rectangles) are used for concepts that exist independently. Attributes (ovals) are used for concepts that exist only in connection with a related entity. Relations (diamonds) give a semantic meaning to the relation between entities. Numbers specify the cardinality of the relations.Some of the attribute values are URIs. Those values are always full URIs and never relative references in the information model.
They can, however, be expressed as relative references in serializations, and often are.These models provide an abstract view of the information expressed in link-format documents and a Resource Directory. They cover the concepts, but not necessarily all details of an RD’s operation; they are meant to give an overview, and not be a template for implementations.The model shown in models the contents of /.well-known/core which contains:a set of links belonging to the hosting web serverThe web server is free to choose links it deems appropriate to be exposed in its .well-known/core.
Typically, the links describe resources that are served by the host, but the set can also contain links to resources on other servers (see examples in page 14).
The set does not necessarily contain links to all resources served by the host.A link has the following attributes (see ):Zero or more link relations: They describe relations between the link context and the link target.
In link-format serialization, they are expressed as space-separated values in the “rel” attribute, and default to “hosts”.A link context URI: It defines the source of the relation, e.g. who “hosts” something.
In link-format serialization, it is expressed in the “anchor” attribute. It defaults to that document’s URI.A link target URI: It defines the destination of the relation (e.g. what is hosted), and is the topic of all target attributes.
In link-format serialization, it is expressed between angular brackets, and sometimes called the “href”.Other target attributes (e.g. resource type (rt), interface (if), or content-type (ct)).
These provide additional information about the target URI.The model shown in models the contents of the resource directory which contains in addition to /.well-known/core:0 to n Registration (entries) of endpoints,A registration is associated with one endpoint. A registration defines a set of links as defined for /.well-known/core. A Registration has six types of attributes:a unique endpoint name (“ep”) within a sectora Registration Base URI (“base”, a URI typically describing the scheme://authority part)a lifetime (“lt”),a registration resource location inside the RD (“href”),optionally a sector (“d”)optional additional endpoint attributes (from )The cardinality of “base” is currently 1;
future documents are invited to extend the RD specification to support multiple values (e.g. ).
Its value is used as a Base URI when resolving URIs in the links contained in the endpoint.Links are modelled as they are in .Over the last few years, mobile operators around the world
have focused on development of M2M solutions in order to
expand the business to the new type of users: machines. The
machines are connected directly to a mobile network using an appropriate
embedded wireless interface (GSM/GPRS, WCDMA, LTE) or via a gateway providing
short and wide range wireless interfaces. From the system design point of
view, the ambition is to design horizontal solutions that can enable utilization
of machines in different applications depending on their current availability
and capabilities as well as application requirements, thus avoiding silo
like solutions. One of the crucial enablers of such design is the ability
to discover resources (machines — endpoints) capable of providing required
information at a given time or acting on instructions from the end users.Imagine a scenario where endpoints installed on vehicles enable
tracking of the position of these vehicles for fleet management purposes and allow
monitoring of environment parameters. During the boot-up process
endpoints register with a Resource Directory, which is hosted by the
mobile operator or somewhere in the cloud. Periodically, these endpoints
update their registration and may modify resources they offer.When endpoints are not always connected, for example because they enter
a sleep mode, a remote server is usually used to provide proxy access to
the endpoints. Mobile apps or web applications for environment monitoring contact the RD, look up the endpoints capable of providing information about the environment using an appropriate set of link parameters, obtain information on how to contact them (URLs of the proxy server), and then initiate interaction to obtain information that is finally processed, displayed on the screen and usually stored in a database. Similarly, fleet management systems provide
the appropriate link parameters to the RD to look up for EPs deployed on
the vehicles the application is responsible for.Home and commercial building automation systems can benefit from the use
of M2M web services. The discovery requirements of these applications are
demanding. Home automation usually relies on run-time discovery to commission
the system, whereas in building automation a combination of professional
commissioning and run-time discovery is used. Both home and building automation
involve peer-to-peer interactions between endpoints, and involve battery-powered
sleeping devices.Resources may be shared through data brokers that have no knowledge beforehand
of who is going to consume the data. Resource Directory can be used to hold
links about resources and services hosted anywhere to make them discoverable
by a general class of applications.For example, environmental and weather sensors that generate data for public
consumption may provide data to an intermediary server, or broker. Sensor
data are published to the intermediary upon changes or at regular intervals.
Descriptions of the sensors that resolve to links to sensor data may be published
to a Resource Directory. Applications wishing to consume the data can use
RD Lookup to discover and resolve links
to the desired resources and endpoints. The Resource Directory service need
not be coupled with the data intermediary service. Mapping of Resource Directories
to data intermediaries may be many-to-many.Metadata in web link formats like which may be internally stored as triples, or relation/attribute
pairs providing metadata about resource links, need to be supported by Resource Directories . External catalogues that are
represented in other formats may be converted to common web linking formats for
storage and access by Resource Directories. Since it is common practice for these
to be URN encoded, simple and lossless structural transforms should
generally be sufficient to store external metadata in Resource Directories.The additional features of Resource Directory allow sectors to be defined
to enable access to a particular set of resources from particular applications.
This provides isolation and protection of sensitive data when needed. Application groups with multicast addresses may be defined to support efficient data transport.A (re-)starting device may want to find one or more resource directories
for discovery purposes.The device may be pre-configured to exercise specific mechanisms for
finding the resource directory:It may be configured with a specific IP address for the RD. That IP
address may also be an anycast address, allowing the network to
forward RD requests to an RD that is topologically close; each
target network environment in which some of these preconfigured
nodes are to be brought up is then configured with a route for this
anycast address that leads to an appropriate RD. (Instead of using
an anycast address, a multicast address can also be preconfigured.
The RD servers then need to configure one of their
interfaces with this multicast address.)It may be configured with a DNS name for the RD and use DNS to return the IP address of the RD; it can find a DNS server to perform the lookup using the usual mechanisms for finding DNS servers.It may be configured to use a service discovery mechanism such as
DNS-SD . The present specification suggests configuring
the service with name rd._sub._coap._udp, preferably within the
domain of the querying nodes.For cases where the device is not specifically configured with a way
to find a resource directory, the network may want to provide a
suitable default.If the address configuration of the network is performed via SLAAC,
this is provided by the RDAO option .If the address configuration of the network is performed via DHCP,
this could be provided via a DHCP option (no such option is defined
at the time of writing).Finally, if neither the device nor the network offers any specific
configuration, the device may want to employ heuristics to find a
suitable resource directory.The present specification does not fully define these heuristics, but
suggests a number of candidates:In a 6LoWPAN, just assume the Border Router (6LBR) can act as a
resource directory (using the ABRO option to find that ).
Confirmation can be obtained by sending a Unicast to
coap://[6LBR]/.well-known/core?rt=core.rd*.In a network that supports multicast well, discovering the RD using
a multicast query for /.well-known/core as specified in CoRE Link
Format : Sending a Multicast GET to
coap://[MCD1]/.well-known/core?rt=core.rd*. RDs within the
multicast scope will answer the query.As some of the RD addresses obtained by the methods listed here are
just (more or less educated) guesses, endpoints MUST make use of any
error messages to very strictly rate-limit requests to candidate IP
addresses that don’t work out. For example, an ICMP Destination
Unreachable message (and, in particular, the port unreachable code for
this message) may indicate the lack of a CoAP server on the candidate
host, or a CoAP error response code such as 4.05 “Method Not Allowed”
may indicate unwillingness of a CoAP server to act as a directory
server.If multiple candidate addresses are discovered, the device may pick any of them initially,
unless the discovery method indicates a more precise selection scheme.
The Resource Directory Address Option (RDAO) using IPv6 Neighbor Discovery (ND) carries
information about the address of the Resource Directory (RD). This information is
needed when endpoints cannot discover the Resource Directory with a link-local
or realm-local scope multicast address because the endpoint and the RD are separated by a Border Router
(6LBR). In many circumstances the availability of DHCP cannot be guaranteed either
during commissioning of the network. The presence and the use of the RD is
essential during commissioning.It is possible to send multiple RDAO options in one message,
indicating as many resource directory addresses.The RDAO format is:This section defines the required set of REST interfaces between a Resource Directory
(RD) and endpoints. Although the examples throughout this section assume the use of
CoAP , these REST interfaces can also be realized using HTTP .
In all definitions in this section, both CoAP response codes (with dot notation) and HTTP response codes
(without dot notation) are shown. An RD implementing this specification MUST support
the discovery, registration, update, lookup, and removal interfaces defined in this section.All operations on the contents of the Resource Directory MUST be atomic and idempotent.A resource directory MAY make the information submitted to it available to further
directories, if it can ensure that a loop does not form. The protocol used
between directories to ensure loop-free operation is outside the scope of
this document.Resource Directory implementations using this specification MUST support the
application/link-format content format (ct=40).Resource Directories implementing this specification MAY support additional content formats.Any additional content format supported by a Resource Directory implementing this
specification MUST have an equivalent serialization in the application/link-format
content format.Before an endpoint can make use of an RD, it must first know the RD’s address
and port, and the URI path information for its REST APIs. This section defines
discovery of the RD and its URIs using the well-known interface of the
CoRE Link Format . A complete set of RD discovery methods is described in .Discovery of the RD registration URI path is performed by sending either a multicast or
unicast GET request to /.well-known/core and including a Resource Type (rt)
parameter with the value “core.rd” in the query string. Likewise, a
Resource Type parameter value of “core.rd-lookup*” is used to discover the
URIs for RD Lookup operations, core.rd* is used to discover all URI paths for RD operations.
Upon success, the response will contain a payload with
a link format entry for each RD function discovered, indicating the URI
of the RD function returned and the corresponding Resource Type. When performing
multicast discovery, the multicast IP address used will depend on the scope required
and the multicast capabilities of the network (see .A Resource Directory MAY provide hints about the content-formats it supports in the links it exposes or registers, using the “ct” link attribute, as shown in the example below. Clients MAY use these hints to select alternate content-formats for interaction with the Resource Directory.HTTP does not support multicast and consequently only unicast discovery can be supported
using HTTP.
The well-known entry points SHOULD be provided to enable unicast discovery.An implementation of this resource directory specification MUST support query filtering for
the rt parameter as defined in .While the link targets in this discovery step are often expressed in path-absolute form,
this is not a requirement.
Clients of the RD SHOULD therefore accept URIs of all schemes they support,
both as URIs and relative references,
and not limit the set of discovered URIs to those hosted at the address used for URI discovery.The URI Discovery operation can yield multiple URIs of a given resource type.
The client of the RD can use any of the discovered addresses initially.The discovery request interface is specified as follows
(this is exactly the Well-Known Interface of Section 4,
with the additional requirement that the server MUST support query filtering):
EP and Client -> RD
GET
/.well-known/core{?rt}
Resource Type. SHOULD contain one of the values “core.rd”, “core.rd-lookup*”,
“core.rd-lookup-res”, “core.rd-lookup-ep”, or “core.rd*”
application/link-format (if any)
application/link-format+json (if any)
application/link-format+cbor (if any)The following response codes are defined for this interface:
2.05 “Content” or 200 “OK” with an
application/link-format, application/link-format+json, or application/link-format+cbor payload containing one or more matching entries for the RD resource.
4.00 “Bad Request” or 400 “Bad Request” is returned in case of a malformed request for a unicast
request.
No error response to a multicast request.
YES (Unicast only)The following example shows an endpoint discovering an RD using this interface,
thus learning that the directory resource location, in this example, is /rd, and that the
content-format delivered by the server hosting the resource is application/link-format
(ct=40). Note that it is up to the RD to choose its RD locations.The following example shows the way of indicating that a client may request
alternate content-formats. The Content-Format code attribute “ct” MAY include a
space-separated sequence of Content-Format codes as specified in
Section 7.2.1 of , indicating that multiple content-formats are available.
The example below shows the required Content-Format 40 (application/link-format)
indicated as well as the CBOR and JSON representation of link format.
The RD resource locations /rd, and /rd-lookup are example values.
The server in this example also indicates that it is capable of providing observation on resource lookups.[ The RFC editor is asked to replace these and later occurrences of MCD1, TBD64 and
TBD504 with the assigned IPv6 site-local address for “all CoRE Resource Directories” and the numeric ID values assigned by IANA to
application/link-format+cbor and application/link-format+json, respectively, as
they are defined in I-D.ietf-core-links-json. ]From a management and maintenance perspective,
it is necessary to identify the components that constitute the RD server.
The identification refers to information about for example client-server incompatibilities,
supported features, required updates and other aspects.
The URI discovery address, a described in section 4 of can be used to find the identification.It
would typically be stored in an implementation information link
(as described in ):Note that depending on the particular server’s architecture,
such a link could be anchored at the RD server’s root,
at the discovery site (as in this example) or
at individual RD components.
The latter is to be expected when different applications
are run on the same server.After discovering the location of an RD, a registrant-ep or CT MAY
register the resources of the registrant-ep using the registration interface. This interface
accepts a POST from an endpoint containing the list of resources to be added
to the directory as the message payload in the CoRE Link Format , JSON CoRE Link Format (application/link-format+json), or CBOR CoRE Link Format (application/link-format+cbor) , along with query
parameters indicating the name of the endpoint, and optionally the sector,
lifetime and base URI of the registration.
It is expected that other specifications will define further parameters (see
). The RD then creates a new registration resource in the RD and returns its location. The receiving endpoint MUST use that
location when refreshing registrations using this interface. Registration
resources in the RD are kept active for the period indicated by the lifetime
parameter. The creating endpoint is responsible for refreshing the registration resource within this
period using either the registration or update interface. The registration
interface MUST be implemented to be idempotent, so that registering twice
with the same endpoint parameters ep and d (sector) does not create multiple registration resources.The following rules apply for an update identified by a given (ep, d) value pair:when the parameter values of the Update generate the same attribute values as already present, the location of the already existing registration is returned.when for a given (ep, d) value pair the update generates attribute values which are different from the existing one, the existing registration is removed and a new registration with a new location is created.when the (ep, d) value pair of the update is different from any existing registration, a new registration is generated.The posted link-format document can (and typically does) contain relative references
both in its link targets and in its anchors, or contain empty anchors.
The RD server needs to resolve these references in order to faithfully represent them in lookups.
They are resolved against the base URI of the registration,
which is provided either explicitly in the base parameter or constructed implicitly from the requester’s URI as constructed from its network address and scheme.Link format documents submitted to the resource directory are interpreted
as Modernized Link Format (see ) by the RD.
A registrant-ep SHOULD NOT submit documents whose interpretations according to
and differ
to avoid the ambiguities described in .In practice, most links (precisely listed in ) can be submitted
without consideration for those details.The registration request interface is specified as follows:
EP -> RD
POST
{+rd}{?ep,d,lt,base,extra-attrs*}
RD registration URI
(mandatory). This is the location of
the RD, as obtained from discovery.
Endpoint name (mostly mandatory). The endpoint name is an identifier
that MUST be unique within a sector. The maximum length of this
parameter is 63 bytes.
If the RD is configured to recognize the endpoint (e.g. based on its security context),
the endpoint sets no endpoint name, and the RD assigns one based on a set of configuration parameter values.
Sector (optional). The sector to which this endpoint belongs. The maximum
length of this parameter is 63 bytes. When this parameter is not present, the
RD MAY associate the endpoint with a configured default sector or leave it empty.
The endpoint name and sector name are not set when one or both are set in an accompanying authorization token.
Lifetime (optional). Lifetime of the registration in seconds. Range of 60-4294967295.
If no lifetime is included in the initial registration, a default value of
90000 (25 hours) SHOULD be assumed.
Base URI (optional). This parameter sets the base URI of the registration, under which
the relative links in the payload are to be interpreted. The specified URI typically does not have a path component of its own, and MUST be suitable as a base URI to resolve any relative references given in the registration. The parameter is therefore usually of the shape “scheme://authority” for
HTTP and CoAP URIs.
The URI SHOULD NOT have a query or fragment component
as any non-empty relative part in a reference would remove those parts from the resulting URI.In the absence of this parameter the scheme of the protocol, source address
and source port of the registration request are assumed.
That Base URI is constructed by concatenating the used protcol’s scheme
with the characters “://”, the requester’s source address as an address
literal and “:” followed by its port (if it was not the protocol’s default
one) in analogy to Section 6.5.This parameter is
mandatory when the directory is filled by a third party such as an
commissioning tool.If the registrant-ep uses an ephemeral port to register with, it MUST include the base
parameter in the registration to provide a valid network path.If the registrant-ep, located behind a NAT gateway, is registering with a Resource
Directory which is on the network service side of the NAT gateway, the endpoint MUST
use a persistent port for the outgoing registration in order to provide the NAT
gateway with a valid network address for replies and incoming requests.Endpoints that register with a base that contains a path component
can not meaningfully use Link Format due to its prevalence of
the Origin concept in relative reference resolution; they can submit
payloads for interpretation as Modernized Link Format.
Typically, links submitted by such an endpoint are of the path-noscheme
(starts with a path not preceded by a slash, precisely defined in Section 3.3)
form.
Additional registration attributes (optional). The endpoint can pass any
parameter registered at to the directory. If the RD is
aware of the parameter’s specified semantics, it processes it accordingly.
Otherwise, it MUST store the unknown key and its value(s) as an endpoint
attribute for further lookup.
application/link-format
application/link-format+json
application/link-format+cborThe following response codes are defined for this interface:
2.01 “Created” or 201 “Created”. The Location-Path option or Location header
MUST be included in the response. This location MUST be a stable identifier
generated by the RD as it is used for all subsequent
operations on this registration resource. The registration resource location thus returned is for the purpose of updating the lifetime
of the registration and for maintaining the content of the
registered links, including updating and deleting links.A registration with an already registered ep and d value pair
responds with the same success code and location as the original registration;
the set of links registered with the endpoint is replaced with the links
from the payload.The location MUST NOT have a query or fragment component,
as that could conflict with query parameters during the Registration Update operation.
Therefore, the Location-Query option MUST NOT be present in a successful response.
4.00 “Bad Request” or 400 “Bad Request”. Malformed request.
5.03 “Service Unavailable” or 503 “Service Unavailable”. Service could not perform the operation.
YESIf the registration fails with a Service Unavailable response
and a Max-Age option or Retry-After header,
the registering endpoint SHOULD retry the operation after the time indicated.
If the registration fails in another way, including request timeouts,
or if the Service Unavailable error persists after several retries,
or indicates a longer time than the endpoint is willing to wait,
it SHOULD pick another registration URI from the “URI Discovery” step
and if there is only one or the list is exhausted,
pick other choices from the “Finding a Resource Directory” step.
Care has to be taken to consider the freshness of results obtained earlier,
e.g. of the result of a /.well-known/core response,
the lifetime of an RDAO option and
of DNS responses.
Any rate limits and persistent errors from the “Finding a Resource Directory” step
must be considered for the whole registration time,
not only for a single operation.The following example shows a registrant-ep with the name “node1” registering
two resources to an RD using this interface. The location “/rd”
is an example RD location discovered in a request similar to .A Resource Directory may optionally support HTTP. Here is an example of almost the same registration operation above, when done using HTTP
and the JSON Link Format.Not all endpoints hosting resources are expected to know how to upload links to an RD as described in . Instead, simple endpoints can implement the Simple Registration approach described in this section. An RD implementing this specification MUST implement Simple Registration. However, there may
be security reasons why this form of directory discovery would be disabled.This approach requires that the registrant-ep makes available the hosted resources
that it wants to be discovered, as links on its /.well-known/core interface as
specified in .
The links in that document are subject to the same limitations as the payload of a registration
(with respect to ).The registrant-ep finds one or more addresses of the directory server as described in .The registrant-ep asks the selected directory server to probe its /.well-known/core and publish the links as follows:The registrant-ep sends (and regularly refreshes with) a POST
request to the /.well-known/core URI of the directory server of choice. The body of the POST request is empty, and triggers the resource
directory server to perform GET requests at the requesting registrant-ep’s /.well-known/core to obtain the link-format payload to register.The registrant-ep includes the same registration parameters in the POST request as it would per . The registration base URI of the registration is taken from the requesting server’s URI.The Resource Directory MUST NOT query the registrant-ep’s data before sending the response; this is to accommodate very limited endpoints.
The success condition only indicates that the request was valid (i.e. the passed parameters are valid per se),
not that the link data could be obtained or parsed or was successfully registered into the RD.The simple registration request interface is specified as follows:
EP -> RD
POST
/.well-known/core{?ep,d,lt,extra-attrs*}URI Template Variables are as they are for registration in .
The base attribute is not accepted to keep the registration interface simple;
that rules out registration over CoAP-over-TCP or HTTP that would need to specify one.The following response codes are defined for this interface:
2.04 “Changed”.
4.00 “Bad Request”. Malformed request.
5.03 “Service Unavailable”. Service could not perform the operation.
NOFor the second interaction triggered by the above, the registrant-ep takes the role of server and the RD the role of client.
(Note that this is exactly the Well-Known Interface of Section 4):
RD -> EP
GET
/.well-known/coreThe following response codes are defined for this interface:
2.05 “Content”.
4.00 “Bad Request”. Malformed request.
4.04 “Not Found”. /.well-known/core does not exist or is empty.
5.03 “Service Unavailable”. Service could not perform the operation.
NOThe registration resources MUST be deleted after the expiration of their lifetime. Additional operations on the registration resource cannot be executed because no registration location is returned.The following example shows a registrant-ep using Simple Registration,
by simply sending an empty POST to a resource directory.For some applications, even Simple Registration may be too taxing
for some very constrained devices, in particular if the security requirements
become too onerous.In a controlled environment (e.g. building control), the Resource Directory
can be filled by a third party device, called a Commissioning Tool (CT). The commissioning
tool can fill the Resource Directory from a database or other means. For
that purpose scheme, IP address and port of the URI of the registered device is
the value of the “base” parameter of the registration described in .It should be noted that the value of the “base” parameter applies to all the links of the registration and has consequences for the anchor value of the individual links as exemplified in . An eventual (currently non-existing) “base” attribute of the link is not affected by the value of “base” parameter in the registration.The RD-Groups usage pattern allows announcing application groups inside a Resource Directory.Groups are represented by endpoint registrations.
Their base address is a multicast address,
and they SHOULD be entered with the endpoint type core.rd-group.
The endpoint name can also be referred to as a group name in this context.The registration is inserted into the RD by a Commissioning Tool,
which might also be known as a group manager here.
It performs third party registration and registration updates.The links it registers SHOULD be available on all members that join the group.
Depending on the application, members that lack some resource
MAY be permissible if requests to them fail gracefully.The following example shows a CT registering a group with the name “lights” which provides two resources.
The directory resource path /rd
is an example RD location discovered in a request similar to .In this example, the group manager can easily permit devices that have no
writable color-temperature to join, as they would still respond to brightness
changing commands. Had the group instead contained a single resource that sets
brightness and color temperature atomically, endpoints would need to support
both properties.The resources of a group can be looked up like any other resource,
and the group registrations (along with any additional registration parameters)
can be looked up using the endpoint lookup interface.To discover the resources registered with the RD,
a lookup interface must be provided. This lookup interface
is defined as a default, and it is assumed that RDs may also support lookups
to return resource descriptions in alternative formats (e.g. Atom or HTML
Link) or using more advanced interfaces (e.g. supporting context or semantic
based lookup).RD Lookup allows lookups for endpoints and resources
using attributes defined in this document and for use with the CoRE
Link Format. The result of a lookup request is the list of links (if any)
corresponding to the type of lookup. Thus, an endpoint lookup MUST return a list of endpoints and a resource lookup MUST return a list of links to resources.The lookup type is selected by a URI endpoint, which is indicated by a Resource Type as per below:Lookup TypeResource TypeMandatoryResourcecore.rd-lookup-resMandatoryEndpointcore.rd-lookup-epMandatoryResource lookup results in links that are semantically equivalent to the links submitted to the RD.
The links and link parameters returned by the lookup are equal to the submitted ones,
except that the target and anchor references are fully resolved.Links that did not have an anchor attribute are therefore returned with the base URI of the registration as the anchor.
Links of which href or anchor was submitted as a (full) URI are returned with these attributes unmodified.Above rules allow the client to interpret the response as links without any further knowledge of the storage conventions of the RD.
The Resource Directory MAY replace the registration base URIs with a configured intermediate proxy, e.g. in the case of an HTTP lookup interface for CoAP endpoints.Using the Accept Option, the requester can control whether the returned list is returned in CoRE Link Format (application/link-format, default) or its alternate content-formats (application/link-format+json or application/link-format+cbor).The page and count parameters are used to obtain lookup results in specified increments using pagination, where count specifies how many links to return and page specifies which subset of links organized in sequential pages, each containing ‘count’ links, starting with link zero and page zero. Thus, specifying count of 10 and page of 0 will return the first 10 links in the result set (links 0-9). Count = 10 and page = 1 will return the next ‘page’ containing links 10-19, and so on.Multiple search criteria MAY be included in a lookup. All included criteria MUST match for a link to be returned. The Resource Directory MUST support matching with multiple search criteria.A link matches a search criterion if it has an attribute of the same name and the same value, allowing for a trailing “*” wildcard operator as in Section 4.1 of .
Attributes that are defined as “link-type” match if the search value matches any of their values (see Section 4.1 of ; e.g. ?if=core.s matches ;if="abc core.s";).
A resource link also matches a search criterion if its endpoint would match the criterion, and vice versa, an endpoint link matches a search criterion if any of its resource links matches it.Note that href is a valid search criterion and matches target references. Like all search criteria, on a resource lookup it can match the target reference of the resource link itself, but also the registration resource of the endpoint that registered it.
Queries for resource link targets MUST be in URI form (i.e. not relative references) and are matched against a resolved link target. Queries for endpoints SHOULD be expressed in path-absolute form if possible and MUST be expressed in URI form otherwise; the RD SHOULD recognize either.Endpoints that are interested in a lookup result repeatedly or continuously can use
mechanisms like ETag caching, resource observation (),
or any future mechanism that might allow more efficient observations of collections.
These are advertised, detected and used according to their own specifications
and can be used with the lookup interface as with any other resource.When resource observation is used,
every time the set of matching links changes, or the content of a matching link changes, the RD sends a notification with the matching link set.
The notification contains the successful current response to the given request,
especially with respect to representing zero matching links
(see “Success” item below).The lookup interface is specified as follows:
Client -> RD
GET
{+type-lookup-location}{?page,count,search*}
RD Lookup URI for a given lookup type (mandatory). The address is
discovered as described in .
Search criteria for limiting the number of results (optional).
Page (optional). Parameter cannot be used without the count
parameter. Results are returned from result set in pages that contain
‘count’ links starting from index (page * count). Page numbering starts
with zero.
Count (optional). Number of results is limited to this parameter value. If
the page parameter is also present, the response MUST only include ‘count’
links starting with the (page * count) link in the result set from the query. If
the count parameter is not present, then the response MUST return all matching
links in the result set. Link numbering starts with zero.
application/link-format (optional)
application/link-format+json (optional)
application/link-format+cbor (optional)The following responses codes are defined for this interface:
2.05 “Content” or 200 “OK” with an application/link-format, application/link-format+cbor, or application/link-format+json payload containing matching entries for the lookup.
The payload can contain zero links (which is an empty payload, 80 (hex) or [] in the respective content format),
indicating that no entities matched the request.
No error response to a multicast request.
4.00 “Bad Request” or 400 “Bad Request”. Malformed request.
5.03 “Service Unavailable” or 503 “Service Unavailable”. Service could not perform the operation.
YESThe endpoint lookup returns registration resources which can only be manipulated by the registering endpoint. Examples of endpoint lookup belong to the management aspects of the RD and are shown in . The resource lookup examples are shown in this section.The examples in this section assume the existence of CoAP hosts with a default CoAP port 61616. HTTP hosts are possible and do not change the nature of the examples.The following example shows a client performing a resource lookup with the example resource look-up locations discovered in :The same lookup using the CBOR Link Format media type:A client that wants to be notified of new resources as they show up can use
observation:The following example shows a client performing a paginated resource lookupThe following example shows a client performing a lookup of all resources from
endpoints of all endpoints of a given endpoint type. It assumes that two endpoints (with endpoint
names sensor1 and sensor2) have previously registered with their respective
addresses coap://sensor1.example.com and coap://sensor2.example.com, and
posted the very payload of the 6th request of section 5 of .It demonstrates how absolute link targets stay unmodified, while relative ones
are resolved:The following example shows a client performing a lookup of all resources of all endpoints (groups) with et=core.rd-group.The Resource Directory (RD) provides assistance to applications situated on a selection of nodes to discover endpoints on connected nodes. This section discusses different security aspects of accessing the RD.The contents of the RD are inserted in two ways:The node hosting the discoverable endpoint fills the RD with the contents of /.well-known/core by:
Storing the contents directly into RD (see )Requesting the RD to load the contents from /.well-known/core (see )A Commissioning Tool (CT) fills the RD with endpoint information for a set of discoverable nodes. (see with base=authority parameter value)In both cases, the nodes filling the RD should be authenticated and authorized to change the contents of the RD. An Authorization Server (AS) is responsible to assign a token to the registering node to authorize the node to discover or register endpoints in a given RD .It can be imagined that an installation is divided in a set of security regions, each one with its own RD(s) to discover the endpoints that are part of a given security region. An endpoint that wants to discover an RD, responsible for a given region, needs to be authorized to learn the contents of a given RD. Within a region, for a given RD, a more fine-grained security division is possible based on the values of the endpoint registration parameters. Authorization to discover endpoints with a given set of filter values is recommended for those cases.When a node registers its endpoints, criteria are needed to authorize the node to enter them. An important aspect is the uniqueness of the (endpoint name, and optional sector) pair within the RD. Consider the two cases separately: (1) CT registers endpoints, and (2) the registering node registers its own endpoint(s).
* A CT needs authorization to register a set of endpoints. This authorization can be based on the region, i.e. a given CT is authorized to register any endpoint (endpoint name, sector) into a given RD, or to register an endpoint with (endpoint name, sector) value pairs assigned by the AS, or can be more fine-grained, including a subset of registration parameter values.
* A given endpoint that registers itself, needs to proof its possession of its unique (endpoint name, sector) value pair. Alternatively, the AS can authorize the endpoint to register with an (endpoint name, sector) value pair assigned by the AS.
*
A separate document needs to specify these aspects to ensure interoperability between registering nodes and RD. The subsections below give some hints how to handle a subset of the different aspects.The Resource Server (RS) discussed in is equated to the RD. The client (C) needs to discover the RD as discussed in . C can discover the related AS by sending a request to the RD. The RD denies the request by sending the address of the related AS, as discussed in section 5.1 of .
The client MUST send an authorization request to the AS. When appropriate, the AS returns a token that specifies the authorization permission which needs to be specified in a separate document.The authorized parameter values for the queries by a given endpoint must be registered by the AS. The AS communicates the parameter values in the token. A separate document needs to specify the parameter value combinations and their storage in the token. The RD decodes the token and checks the validity of the queries of the client.This section only considers the assignment of a name to the endpoint based on an automatic mechanism without use of AS. More elaborate protocols are out of scope. The registering endpoint is authorized by the AS to discover the RD and add registrations. A token is provided by the AS and communicated from registering endpoint to RD. It is assumed that DTLS is used to secure the channel between registering endpoint and RD, where the registering endpoint is the DTLS client. Assuming that the client is provided by a certificate at manufacturing time, the certificate is uniquely identified by the CN field and the serial number. The RD can assign a unique endpoint name by using the certificate identifier as endpoint name. Proof of possession of the endpoint name by the registering endpoint is checked by encrypting the certificate identifier with the private key of the registering endpoint, which the RD can decrypt with the public key stored in the certificate.
Even simpler, the authorized registering endpoint can generate a random number (or string) that identifies the endpoint. The RD can check for the improbable replication of the random value. The RD MUST check that registering endpoint uses only one random value for each authorized endpoint.The security considerations as described in Section 7 of and
Section 6 of apply. The /.well-known/core resource may be
protected e.g. using DTLS when hosted on a CoAP server as described in
. DTLS or TLS based security SHOULD be used on all resource
directory interfaces defined in this document.An Endpoint (name, sector) pair is unique within the et of endpoints regsitered by the RD. An Endpoint MUST NOT be identified by its protocol, port or IP
address as these may change over the lifetime of an Endpoint.Every operation performed by an Endpoint on a resource directory
SHOULD be mutually authenticated using Pre-Shared Key, Raw Public Key or
Certificate based security.Consider the following threat: two devices A and B are registered at a single server. Both devices have unique, per-device credentials for use with DTLS to make sure that only parties with authorization to access A or B can do so.Now, imagine that a malicious device A wants to sabotage the device B. It uses its credentials during the DTLS exchange. Then, it specifies the
endpoint name of device B as the name of its own endpoint in device A. If the server does not check
whether the identifier provided in the DTLS handshake matches the
identifier used at the CoAP layer then it may be inclined to use the
endpoint name for looking up what information to provision to the malicious device. specifies an example that removes this threat for endpoints that have a certificate installed.Access control SHOULD be performed separately for the RD registration and Lookup
API paths, as different endpoints may be authorized to register
with an RD from those authorized to lookup endpoints from the RD. Such access
control SHOULD be performed in as fine-grained a level as possible. For example
access control for lookups could be performed either at the sector, endpoint
or resource level.Services that run over UDP unprotected are vulnerable to unknowingly
become part of a DDoS attack as UDP does not require return
routability check. Therefore, an attacker can easily spoof the source
IP of the target entity and send requests to such a service which
would then respond to the target entity. This can be used for
large-scale DDoS attacks on the target. Especially, if the service
returns a response that is order of magnitudes larger than the
request, the situation becomes even worse as now the attack can be
amplified. DNS servers have been widely used for DDoS amplification
attacks. There is also a danger that NTP Servers could become implicated in denial-of-service (DoS) attacks since they run on unprotected UDP, there
is no return routability check, and they can have a large amplification factor.
The responses from the NTP server were found to be
19 times larger than the request. A Resource Directory (RD) which responds
to wild-card lookups is potentially vulnerable if run with CoAP over UDP.
Since there is no return routability check and the responses can be significantly
larger than requests, RDs can unknowingly become part of a DDoS amplification
attack.IANA is asked to enter the following values into the Resource Type (rt=) Link
Target Attribute Values sub-registry of the Constrained Restful Environments
(CoRE) Parameters registry defined in :ValueDescriptionReferencecore.rdDirectory resource of an RDRFCTHIS core.rd-lookup-resResource lookup of an RDRFCTHIS core.rd-lookup-epEndpoint lookup of an RDRFCTHIS core.rd-epEndpoint resource of an RDRFCTHIS This document registers one new ND option type under the sub-registry “IPv6 Neighbor Discovery Option Formats”:Resource Directory address Option (38)This specification defines a new sub-registry for registration and lookup
parameters called “RD Parameters” under “CoRE Parameters”. Although this
specification defines a basic set of parameters, it is expected that other
standards that make use of this interface will define new ones.Each entry in the registry must includethe human readable name of the parameter,the short name as used in query parameters or link attributes,indication of whether it can be passed as a query parameter at registration of endpoints, as a query parameter in lookups, or be expressed as a link attribute,validity requirements if any, anda description.The query parameter MUST be both a valid URI query key and a parmname as used in .The description must give details on whether the parameter can be updated, and how it is to be processed in lookups.The mechanisms around new RD parameters should be designed in such a way that they tolerate RD implementations that are unaware of the parameter and expose any parameter passed at registration or updates on in endpoint lookups. (For example, if a parameter used at registration were to be confidential, the registering endpoint should be instructed to only set that parameter if the RD advertises support for keeping it confidential at the discovery step.)Initial entries in this sub-registry are as follows:Full nameShortValidityUseDescriptionEndpoint NameepRLAName of the endpoint, max 63 bytesLifetimelt60-4294967295RLifetime of the registration in secondsSectordRLASector to which this endpoint belongsRegistration Base URIbaseURIRLAThe scheme, address and port and path at which this server is availablePagepageIntegerLUsed for paginationCountcountIntegerLUsed for paginationEndpoint TypeetRLASemantic name of the endpoint (see )(Short: Short name used in query parameters or link attributes. Use: R = used at registration, L = used at lookup, A = expressed in link attributeThe descriptions for the options defined in this document are only summarized here.
To which registrations they apply and when they are to be shown is described in the respective sections of this document.The IANA policy for future additions to the sub-registry is “Expert Review”
as described in . The evaluation should consider
formal criteria,
duplication of functionality (Is the new entry redundant with an existing one?),
topical suitability (E.g. is the described property actually a property of the endpoint and not a property of a particular resource, in which case it should go into the payload of the registration and need not be registered?),
and the potential for conflict with commonly used link attributes (For example, if could be used as a parameter for conditional registration if it were not to be used in lookup or attributes, but would make a bad parameter for lookup, because a resource lookup with an if query parameter could ambiguously filter by the registered endpoint property or the link attribute).
It is expected that the registry will receive between 5 and 50 registrations in total over the next years.An endpoint registering at an RD can describe itself with endpoint types,
similar to how resources are described with Resource Types in .
An endpoint type is expressed as a string, which can be either a URI or one of
the values defined in the Endpoint Type sub-registry.
Endpoint types can be passed in the et query parameter as part of extra-attrs
at the Registration step,
are shown on endpoint lookups using the et target attribute,
and can be filtered for using et as a search criterion in resource and
endpoint lookup.
Multiple endpoint types are given as separate query parameters or link
attributes.Note that Endpoint Type differs from Resource Type in that it uses multiple
attributes rather than space separated values.
As a result, Resource Directory implementations automatically support correct
filtering in the lookup interfaces from the rules for unknown endpoint
attributes.This specification establishes a new sub-registry under “CoRE Parameters”
called ‘“Endpoint Type” (et=) RD Parameter values’.
The registry properties (required policy, requirements, template) are identical
to those of the Resource Type parameters in , in short:The review policy is IETF Review for values starting with “core”, and
Specification Required for others.The requirements to be enforced are:The values MUST be related to the purpose described in .The registered values MUST conform to the ABNF reg-rel-type definition of
and MUST NOT be a URI.It is recommended to use the period “.” character for segmentation.The registry initially contains one value:“core.rd-group”: An application group as described in .IANA has
assigned the following multicast addresses for use by CoAP nodes:IPv4 – “all CoRE resource directories” address, from the “IPv4
Multicast Address Space Registry” equal to “All CoAP Nodes”, 224.0.1.187. As the address is used for
discovery that may span beyond a single network, it has come from
the Internetwork Control Block (224.0.1.x, RFC 5771).IPv6 – “all CoRE resource directories” address MCD1 (suggestions FF0X::FE), from the “IPv6 Multicast
Address Space Registry”, in the “Variable Scope Multicast
Addresses” space (RFC 3307). Note that there is a distinct
multicast address for each scope that interested CoAP nodes should
listen to; CoAP needs the Link-Local and Site-Local scopes only.Two examples are presented: a Lighting Installation example in and a LWM2M example in .This example shows a simplified lighting installation which makes use of
the Resource Directory (RD) with a CoAP interface to facilitate the installation and start up of
the application code in the lights and sensors. In particular, the example
leads to the definition of a group and the enabling of the corresponding
multicast address as described in . No conclusions must be drawn on the realization of actual
installation or naming procedures, because the example only “emphasizes” some of the issues
that may influence the use of the RD and does not pretend to be normative.The example assumes that the installation is managed. That means that a Commissioning
Tool (CT) is used to authorize the addition of nodes, name them, and name
their services. The CT can be connected to the installation in many ways:
the CT can be part of the installation network, connected by WiFi to the
installation network, or connected via GPRS link, or other method.It is assumed that there are two naming authorities for the installation:
(1) the network manager that is responsible for the correct operation of
the network and the connected interfaces, and (2) the lighting manager that
is responsible for the correct functioning of networked lights and sensors.
The result is the existence of two naming schemes coming from the two managing
entities.The example installation consists of one presence sensor, and two luminaries,
luminary1 and luminary2, each with their own wireless interface. Each luminary
contains three lamps: left, right and middle. Each luminary is accessible
through one endpoint. For each lamp a resource exists to modify the settings
of a lamp in a luminary. The purpose of the installation is that the presence
sensor notifies the presence of persons to a group of lamps. The group of
lamps consists of: middle and left lamps of luminary1 and right lamp of luminary2.Before commissioning by the lighting manager, the network is installed and
access to the interfaces is proven to work by the network manager.At the moment of installation, the network under installation is not necessarily
connected to the DNS infra structure. Therefore, SLAAC IPv6 addresses are
assigned to CT, RD, luminaries and sensor shown in below:NameIPv6 addressluminary12001:db8:4::1luminary22001:db8:4::2Presence sensor2001:db8:4::3Resource directory2001:db8:4::ffIn the use of resource directory during installation is
presented.It is assumed that access to the DNS infrastructure is not always possible
during installation. Therefore, the SLAAC addresses are used in this section.For discovery, the resource types (rt) of the devices are important. The
lamps in the luminaries have rt: light, and the presence sensor has rt: p-sensor.
The endpoints have names which are relevant to the light installation manager.
In this case luminary1, luminary2, and the presence sensor are located in
room 2-4-015, where luminary1 is located at the window and luminary2 and
the presence sensor are located at the door. The endpoint names reflect
this physical location. The middle, left and right lamps are accessed via
path /light/middle, /light/left, and /light/right respectively. The identifiers
relevant to the Resource Directory are shown in below:Nameendpointresource pathresource typeluminary1lm_R2-4-015_wndw/light/leftlightluminary1lm_R2-4-015_wndw/light/middlelightluminary1lm_R2-4-015_wndw/light/rightlightluminary2lm_R2-4-015_door/light/leftlightluminary2lm_R2-4-015_door/light/middlelightluminary2lm_R2-4-015_door/light/rightlightPresence sensorps_R2-4-015_door/psp-sensorIt is assumed that the CT knows the RD’s address, and has performed URI
discovery on it that returned a response like the one in the example.The CT inserts the endpoints of the luminaries and the sensor in the RD
using the registration base URI parameter (base) to specify the interface address:The sector name d=R2-4-015 has been added for an efficient lookup because
filtering on “ep” name is more awkward. The same sector name is communicated to
the two luminaries and the presence sensor by the CT.The group is specified in the RD. The base parameter is set to the site-local
multicast address allocated to the group.
In the POST in the example below, the resources supported by all group members are published.After the filling of the RD by the CT, the application in the luminaries
can learn to which groups they belong, and enable their interface for the
multicast address.The luminary, knowing its sector and being configured to join any group
containing lights, searches for candidate groups and joins them:From the returned base parameter value, the luminary learns the multicast address
of the multicast group.Alternatively, the CT can communicate the multicast address directly to the
luminaries by using the “coap-group” resource specified in .Dependent on the situation, only the address, “a”, or the name, “n”, is specified
in the coap-group resource.The presence sensor can learn the presence of groups that support resources with rt=light in its own sector by sending the same request, as used by the luminary. The presence sensor learns the multicast address to use for sending messages to the luminaries.This example shows how the OMA LWM2M specification makes use of Resource Directory (RD).OMA LWM2M is a profile for device services based on CoAP(OMA Name Authority). LWM2M defines a simple object model and a number of abstract interfaces and operations for device management and device service enablement.An LWM2M server is an instance of an LWM2M middleware service layer, containing a Resource Directory along with other LWM2M interfaces defined by the LWM2M specification.CoRE Resource Directory (RD) is used to provide the LWM2M Registration interface.LWM2M does not provide for registration sectors and does not currently
use the rd-lookup interface.The LWM2M specification describes a set of interfaces and a resource model used between a LWM2M device and an LWM2M server. Other interfaces, proxies, and applications are currently out of scope for LWM2M.The location of the LWM2M Server and RD URI path is provided by the LWM2M Bootstrap process, so no dynamic discovery of the RD is used. LWM2M Servers and endpoints are not required to implement the /.well-known/core resource.The OMA LWM2M object model is based on a simple 2 level class hierarchy consisting of Objects and Resources.An LWM2M Resource is a REST endpoint, allowed to be a single value or an array of values of the same data type.An LWM2M Object is a resource template and container type that encapsulates a set of related resources. An LWM2M Object represents a specific type of information source; for example, there is a LWM2M Device Management object that represents a network connection, containing resources that represent individual properties like radio signal strength.Since there may potentially be more than one of a given type object, for example more than one network connection, LWM2M defines instances of objects that contain the resources that represent a specific physical thing.The URI template for LWM2M consists of a base URI followed by Object, Instance, and Resource IDs:{/base-uri}{/object-id}{/object-instance}{/resource-id}{/resource-instance}The five variables given here are strings. base-uri can also have the
special value “undefined” (sometimes called “null” in RFC 6570).
Each of the variables object-instance, resource-id, and
resource-instance can be the special value “undefined” only if the
values behind it in this sequence also are “undefined”. As a special
case, object-instance can be “empty” (which is different from
“undefined”) if resource-id is not “undefined”.base-uri := Base URI for LWM2M resources or “undefined” for default (empty) base URIobject-id := OMNA (OMA Name Authority) registered object ID (0-65535)object-instance := Object instance identifier (0-65535) or
“undefined”/”empty” (see above)) to refer to all instances of an object IDresource-id := OMNA (OMA Name Authority) registered resource ID (0-65535) or “undefined” to refer to all resources within an instanceresource-instance := Resource instance identifier or “undefined” to refer to single instance of a resourceLWM2M IDs are 16 bit unsigned integers represented in decimal (no
leading zeroes except for the value 0) by URI format strings. For
example, a LWM2M URI might be:The base uri is empty, the Object ID is 1, the instance ID is 0, the
resource ID is 1, and the resource instance is “undefined”. This
example URI points to internal resource 1, which represents the
registration lifetime configured, in instance 0 of a type 1 object
(LWM2M Server Object).LWM2M defines a registration interface based on the REST API, described in . The
RD registration URI path of the LWM2M Resource Directory is specified to be “/rd”.LWM2M endpoints register object IDs, for example </1>, to indicate that a particular object type is supported, and register object instances, for example </1/0>, to indicate that a particular instance of that object type exists.Resources within the LWM2M object instance are not registered with the RD, but may be discovered by reading the resource links from the object instance using GET with a CoAP Content-Format of application/link-format. Resources may also be read as a structured object by performing a GET to the object instance with a Content-Format of senml+json.When an LWM2M object or instance is registered, this indicates to the LWM2M server that the object and its resources are available for management and service enablement (REST API) operations.LWM2M endpoints may use the following RD registration parameters as defined in :Endpoint Name, Lifetime, and LWM2M Version are mandatory parameters for the register operation, all other registration parameters are optional.Additional optional LWM2M registration parameters are defined:NameQueryValidityDescriptionBinding Modeb{“U”,UQ”,”S”,”SQ”,”US”,”UQS”}Available ProtocolsLWM2M Versionver1.0Spec VersionSMS NumbersmsMSISDNThe following RD registration parameters are not currently specified for use in LWM2M:The endpoint registration must include a payload containing links to all supported objects and existing object instances, optionally including the appropriate link-format relations.Here is an example LWM2M registration payload:This link format payload indicates that object ID 1 (LWM2M Server Object) is supported, with a single instance 0 existing, object ID 3 (LWM2M Device object) is supported, with a single instance 0 existing, and object 5 (LWM2M Firmware Object) is supported, with no existing instances.The LwM2M update is really very similar to the registration update as described in , with
the only difference that there are more parameters defined and
available. All the parameters listed in that section are also available
with the initial registration but are all optional:A Registration update is also specified to be used to update the LWM2M server whenever the endpoint’s UDP port or IP address are changed.LWM2M allows for de-registration using the delete method on the returned location from the initial registration operation. LWM2M de-registration proceeds as described in .Oscar Novo, Srdjan Krco, Szymon Sasin, Kerry Lynn, Esko Dijk, Anders
Brandt, Matthieu Vial, Jim Schaad, Mohit Sethi, Hauke Petersen, Hannes Tschofenig, Sampo Ukkola, Linyi
Tian, and Jan Newmarch have provided helpful comments, discussions and ideas to improve and
shape this document. Zach would also like to thank his colleagues from the
EU FP7 SENSEI project, where many of the resource directory concepts were
originally developed.changes from -16 to -17(Note that -17 is published as a direct follow-up to -16, containing a single change to be discussed at IETF103)Removed groups that are enumerations of registrations and have dedicated mechanismAdd groups that are enumerations of shared resources and are a special case of endpoint registrationschanges from -15 to -16Recommend a common set of resources for members of a groupClarified use of multicast group in lighting exampleAdd note on concurrent registrations from one EP being possible but not expectedRefresh web examples appendix to reflect current use of Modernized Link FormatAdd examples of URIs where Modernized Link Format mattersEditorial changeschanges from -14 to -15Rewrite of section “Security policies”Clarify that the “base” parameter text applies both to relative references
both in anchor and hrefRenamed “Registree-EP” to Registrant-EP”Talk of “relative references” and “URIs” rather than “relative” and
“absolute” URIs. (The concept of “absolute URIs” of is not needed in RD).Fixed examplesEditorial changeschanges from -13 to -14Rename “registration context” to “registration base URI” (and “con” to
“base”) and “domain” to “sector” (where the abbreviation “d” stays for
compatibility reasons)Introduced resource types core.rd-ep and core.rd-gpRegistration management moved to appendix A, including endpoint and group lookupMinor editorial changes
PATCH/iPATCH is clearly deferred to another documentRecommend against query / fragment identifier in con=Interface description lists are described as illustrativeRewording of Simple RegistrationSimple registration carries no error information and succeeds immediately (previously, sequence was unspecified)Lookup: href are matched against resolved values (previously, this was unspecified)Lookup: lt are not exposed any morecon/base: Paths are allowedRegistration resource locations can not have query or fragment partsDefault life time extended to 25 hoursclarified registration update ruleslt-value semantics for lookup clarified.added template for simple registrationchanges from -12 to -13Added “all resource directory” nodes MC addressClarified observation behaviorversion identificationexample rt= and et= valuesdomain from figure 2more explanatory textendpoints of a groups hosted by different RDresolve RFC6690-vs-8288 resolution ambiguities:
require registered links not to be relative when using anchorreturn absolute URIs in resource lookupchanges from -11 to -12added Content Model section, including ER diagramremoved domain lookup interface; domains are now plain attributes of groups and endpointsupdated chapter “Finding a Resource Directory”; now distinguishes configuration-provided, network-provided and heuristic sourcesimproved text on: atomicity, idempotency, lookup with multiple parameters, endpoint removal, simple registrationupdated LWM2M descriptionclarified where relative references are resolved, and how context and anchor interactnew appendix on the interaction with RFCs 6690, 5988 and 3986lookup interface: group and endpoint lookup return group and registration resources as link targetslookup interface: search parameters work the same across all entitiesremoved all methods that modify links in an existing registration (POST with payload, PATCH and iPATCH)removed plurality definition (was only needed for link modification)enhanced IANA registry textstate that lookup resources can be observableMore examples and improved textchanges from -09 to -10removed “ins” and “exp” link-format extensions.removed all text concerning DNS-SD.removed inconsistency in RDAO text.suggestions taken over from various sourcesreplaced “Function Set” with “REST API”, “base URI”, “base path”moved simple registration to registration sectionchanges from -08 to -09clarified the “example use” of the base RD resource values /rd, /rd-lookup, and /rd-group.changed “ins” ABNF notation.various editorial improvements, including in examplesclarifications for RDAOchanges from -07 to -08removed link target value returned from domain and group lookup typesMaximum length of domain parameter 63 bytes for consistency with groupremoved option for simple POST of link data, don’t require a .well-known/core resource to accept POST data and handle it in a special way; we already have /rd for thatadd IPv6 ND Option for discovery of an RDclarify group configuration section 6.1 that endpoints must be registered before including them in a groupremoved all superfluous client-server diagramssimplified lighting exampleintroduced Commissioning ToolRD-Look-up text is extended.changes from -06 to -07added text in the discovery section to allow content format hints to be exposed in the discovery link attributeseditorial updates to section 9update author informationminor text correctionsChanges from -05 to -06added note that the PATCH section is contingent on the progress of
the PATCH methodchanges from -04 to -05added Update Endpoint Links using PATCHhttp access made explicit in interface specificationAdded http examplesChanges from -03 to -04:Added http response codesClarified endpoint name usageAdd application/link-format+cbor content-formatChanges from -02 to -03:Added an example for lighting and DNS integrationAdded an example for RD use in OMA LWM2MAdded Read Links operation for link inspection by endpointsExpanded DNS-SD sectionAdded draft authors Peter van der Stok and Michael KosterChanges from -01 to -02:Added a catalogue use case.Changed the registration update to a POST with optional link format payload. Removed the endpoint type update from the update.Additional examples section added for more complex use cases.New DNS-SD mapping section.Added text on endpoint identification and authentication.Error code 4.04 added to Registration Update and Delete requests.Made 63 bytes a SHOULD rather than a MUST for endpoint name and resource type parameters.Changes from -00 to -01:Removed the ETag validation feature.Place holder for the DNS-SD mapping section.Explicitly disabled GET or POST on returned Location.New registry for RD parameters.Added support for the JSON Link Format.Added reference to the Groupcomm WG draft.Changes from -05 to WG Document -00:Updated the version and date.Changes from -04 to -05:Restricted Update to parameter updates.Added pagination support for the Lookup interface.Minor editing, bug fixes and reference updates.Added group support.Changed rt to et for the registration and update interface.Changes from -03 to -04:Added the ins= parameter back for the DNS-SD mapping.Integrated the Simple Directory Discovery from Carsten.Editorial improvements.Fixed the use of ETags.Fixed tickets 383 and 372Changes from -02 to -03:Changed the endpoint name back to a single registration parameter ep= and removed the h= and ins= parameters.Updated REST interface descriptions to use RFC6570 URI Template format.Introduced an improved RD Lookup design as its own function set.Improved the security considerations section.Made the POST registration interface idempotent by requiring the ep= parameter to be present.Changes from -01 to -02:Added a terminology section.Changed the inclusion of an ETag in registration or update to a MAY.Added the concept of an RD Domain and a registration parameter for it.Recommended the Location returned from a registration to be stable, allowing for endpoint and Domain information to be changed during updates.Changed the lookup interface to accept endpoint and Domain as query string parameters to control the scope of a lookup.Constrained RESTful Environments (CoRE) Link FormatThis specification defines Web Linking using a link format for use by constrained web servers to describe hosted resources, their attributes, and other relationships between links. Based on the HTTP Link Header field defined in RFC 5988, the Constrained RESTful Environments (CoRE) Link Format is carried as a payload and is assigned an Internet media type. "RESTful" refers to the Representational State Transfer (REST) architecture. A well-known URI is defined as a default entry point for requesting the links hosted by a server. [STANDARDS-TRACK]Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement LevelsIn many standards track documents several words are used to signify the requirements in the specification. These words are often capitalized. This document defines these words as they should be interpreted in IETF documents. This document specifies an Internet Best Current Practices for the Internet Community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements.Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic SyntaxA Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) is a compact sequence of characters that identifies an abstract or physical resource. This specification defines the generic URI syntax and a process for resolving URI references that might be in relative form, along with guidelines and security considerations for the use of URIs on the Internet. The URI syntax defines a grammar that is a superset of all valid URIs, allowing an implementation to parse the common components of a URI reference without knowing the scheme-specific requirements of every possible identifier. This specification does not define a generative grammar for URIs; that task is performed by the individual specifications of each URI scheme. [STANDARDS-TRACK]Guidelines for Writing an IANA Considerations Section in RFCsMany protocols make use of points of extensibility that use constants to identify various protocol parameters. To ensure that the values in these fields do not have conflicting uses and to promote interoperability, their allocations are often coordinated by a central record keeper. For IETF protocols, that role is filled by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA).To make assignments in a given registry prudently, guidance describing the conditions under which new values should be assigned, as well as when and how modifications to existing values can be made, is needed. This document defines a framework for the documentation of these guidelines by specification authors, in order to assure that the provided guidance for the IANA Considerations is clear and addresses the various issues that are likely in the operation of a registry.This is the third edition of this document; it obsoletes RFC 5226.Web LinkingThis document specifies relation types for Web links, and defines a registry for them. It also defines the use of such links in HTTP headers with the Link header field. [STANDARDS-TRACK]URI TemplateA URI Template is a compact sequence of characters for describing a range of Uniform Resource Identifiers through variable expansion. This specification defines the URI Template syntax and the process for expanding a URI Template into a URI reference, along with guidelines for the use of URI Templates on the Internet. [STANDARDS-TRACK]DNS-Based Service DiscoveryThis document specifies how DNS resource records are named and structured to facilitate service discovery. Given a type of service that a client is looking for, and a domain in which the client is looking for that service, this mechanism allows clients to discover a list of named instances of that desired service, using standard DNS queries. This mechanism is referred to as DNS-based Service Discovery, or DNS-SD.Representing Constrained RESTful Environments (CoRE) Link Format in JSON and CBORJavaScript Object Notation, JSON (RFC 8259) is a text-based data format which is popular for Web based data exchange. Concise Binary Object Representation, CBOR (RFC7049) is a binary data format which has been optimized for data exchange for the Internet of Things (IoT). For many IoT scenarios, CBOR formats will be preferred since it can help decrease transmission payload sizes as well as implementation code sizes compared to other data formats. Web Linking (RFC 8288) provides a way to represent links between Web resources as well as the relations expressed by them and attributes of such a link. In constrained networks, a collection of Web links can be exchanged in the CoRE link format (RFC 6690). Outside of constrained environments, it may be useful to represent these collections of Web links in JSON, and similarly, inside constrained environments, in CBOR. This specification defines a common format for this.The Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP)The Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) is a specialized web transfer protocol for use with constrained nodes and constrained (e.g., low-power, lossy) networks. The nodes often have 8-bit microcontrollers with small amounts of ROM and RAM, while constrained networks such as IPv6 over Low-Power Wireless Personal Area Networks (6LoWPANs) often have high packet error rates and a typical throughput of 10s of kbit/s. The protocol is designed for machine- to-machine (M2M) applications such as smart energy and building automation.CoAP provides a request/response interaction model between application endpoints, supports built-in discovery of services and resources, and includes key concepts of the Web such as URIs and Internet media types. CoAP is designed to easily interface with HTTP for integration with the Web while meeting specialized requirements such as multicast support, very low overhead, and simplicity for constrained environments.Group Communication for the Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP)The Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) is a specialized web transfer protocol for constrained devices and constrained networks. It is anticipated that constrained devices will often naturally operate in groups (e.g., in a building automation scenario, all lights in a given room may need to be switched on/off as a group). This specification defines how CoAP should be used in a group communication context. An approach for using CoAP on top of IP multicast is detailed based on existing CoAP functionality as well as new features introduced in this specification. Also, various use cases and corresponding protocol flows are provided to illustrate important concepts. Finally, guidance is provided for deployment in various network topologies.Neighbor Discovery Optimization for IPv6 over Low-Power Wireless Personal Area Networks (6LoWPANs)The IETF work in IPv6 over Low-power Wireless Personal Area Network (6LoWPAN) defines 6LoWPANs such as IEEE 802.15.4. This and other similar link technologies have limited or no usage of multicast signaling due to energy conservation. In addition, the wireless network may not strictly follow the traditional concept of IP subnets and IP links. IPv6 Neighbor Discovery was not designed for non- transitive wireless links, as its reliance on the traditional IPv6 link concept and its heavy use of multicast make it inefficient and sometimes impractical in a low-power and lossy network. This document describes simple optimizations to IPv6 Neighbor Discovery, its addressing mechanisms, and duplicate address detection for Low- power Wireless Personal Area Networks and similar networks. The document thus updates RFC 4944 to specify the use of the optimizations defined here. [STANDARDS-TRACK]Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Message Syntax and RoutingThe Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is a stateless application-level protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypertext information systems. This document provides an overview of HTTP architecture and its associated terminology, defines the "http" and "https" Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) schemes, defines the HTTP/1.1 message syntax and parsing requirements, and describes related security concerns for implementations.PATCH and FETCH Methods for the Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP)The methods defined in RFC 7252 for the Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) only allow access to a complete resource, not to parts of a resource. In case of resources with larger or complex data, or in situations where resource continuity is required, replacing or requesting the whole resource is undesirable. Several applications using CoAP need to access parts of the resources.This specification defines the new CoAP methods, FETCH, PATCH, and iPATCH, which are used to access and update parts of a resource.Observing Resources in the Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP)The Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) is a RESTful application protocol for constrained nodes and networks. The state of a resource on a CoAP server can change over time. This document specifies a simple protocol extension for CoAP that enables CoAP clients to "observe" resources, i.e., to retrieve a representation of a resource and keep this representation updated by the server over a period of time. The protocol follows a best-effort approach for sending new representations to clients and provides eventual consistency between the state observed by each client and the actual resource state at the server.The entity-relationship model---toward a unified view of dataWeb LinkingThis specification defines a model for the relationships between resources on the Web ("links") and the type of those relationships ("link relation types").It also defines the serialisation of such links in HTTP headers with the Link header field.CBOR Web Token (CWT)CBOR Web Token (CWT) is a compact means of representing claims to be transferred between two parties. The claims in a CWT are encoded in the Concise Binary Object Representation (CBOR), and CBOR Object Signing and Encryption (COSE) is used for added application-layer security protection. A claim is a piece of information asserted about a subject and is represented as a name/value pair consisting of a claim name and a claim value. CWT is derived from JSON Web Token (JWT) but uses CBOR rather than JSON.CoAP Protocol NegotiationCoAP has been standardised as an application-level REST-based protocol. When multiple transport protocols exist for exchanging CoAP resource representations, this document introduces a way forward for CoAP endpoints as well as intermediaries to agree upon alternate transport and protocol configurations as well as URIs for CoAP messaging. Several mechanisms are proposed: Extending the CoRE Resource Directory with new parameter types, introducing a new CoAP Option with which clients can interact directly with servers without needing the Resource Directory, and finally a new CoRE Link Attribute allowing exposing alternate locations on a per-resource basis.Uniform Resource Names for Device IdentifiersThis memo describes a new Uniform Resource Name (URN) namespace for hardware device identifiers. A general representation of device identity can be useful in many applications, such as in sensor data streams and storage, or equipment inventories. A URN-based representation can be easily passed along in any application that needs the information.Authentication and Authorization for Constrained Environments (ACE) using the OAuth 2.0 Framework (ACE-OAuth)This specification defines a framework for authentication and authorization in Internet of Things (IoT) environments called ACE- OAuth. The framework is based on a set of building blocks including OAuth 2.0 and CoAP, thus making a well-known and widely used authorization solution suitable for IoT devices. Existing specifications are used where possible, but where the constraints of IoT devices require it, extensions are added and profiles are defined.Bootstrapping Remote Secure Key Infrastructures (BRSKI)This document specifies automated bootstrapping of a remote secure key infrastructure (BRSKI) using manufacturer installed X.509 certificate, in combination with a manufacturer's authorizing service, both online and offline. Bootstrapping a new device can occur using a routable address and a cloud service, or using only link-local connectivity, or on limited/disconnected networks. Support for lower security models, including devices with minimal identity, is described for legacy reasons but not encouraged. Bootstrapping is complete when the cryptographic identity of the new key infrastructure is successfully deployed to the device but the established secure connection can be used to deploy a locally issued certificate to the device as well.Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1HTTP has been in use by the World-Wide Web global information initiative since 1990. This specification defines the protocol referred to as "HTTP/1.1", and is an update to RFC 2068. [STANDARDS-TRACK]impl-info: A link relation type for disclosing implementation informationWhen debugging an interoperability problem, it is often helpful to have information about the implementation version of a peer. To enable the disclosure of such information, HTTP defines header fields such as Server and User-Agent. In CoAP, it is rarely appropriate to send information of this kind in every request or response. Instead, the present specification defines a link relation type, impl-info, that can be used to convey this information via the self-description capabilities of the /.well- known/core resource and the CoRE resource directory.This section describes how the registering endpoint can maintain the registries that it created. The registering endpoint can be the registrant-ep or the CT. An endpoint SHOULD NOT use this interface for registries that it did not create. The registries are resources of the RD.After the initial registration, the registering endpoint retains the returned location of the Registration Resource for further operations, including refreshing the registration in order to extend the lifetime and “keep-alive” the registration. When the lifetime of the registration has expired, the RD SHOULD NOT respond to discovery queries concerning this endpoint. The RD SHOULD continue to provide access to the Registration Resource after a registration time-out occurs in order to enable the registering endpoint to eventually refresh the registration. The RD MAY eventually remove the registration resource for the purpose of garbage collection. If the Registration Resource is removed, the corresponding endpoint will need to be re-registered.The Registration Resource may also be used to inspect the registration resource using GET, update the registration, cancel the registration using DELETE, or do an endpoint lookup.These operations are described below.The update interface is used by the registering endpoint to refresh or update its
registration with an RD. To use the interface, the registering endpoint sends a POST request to the registration resource returned by the initial registration operation.An update MAY update the lifetime- or the context- registration parameters
“lt”, “base” as in . Parameters that are not being changed SHOULD NOT
be included in an update. Adding parameters that have not changed increases
the size of the message but does not have any other implications.
Parameters MUST be included as query parameters in an update operation as
in .A registration update resets the timeout of the registration to the (possibly
updated) lifetime of the registration, independent of whether a lt parameter
was given.If the context of the registration is changed in an update,
relative references submitted in the original registration or later updates are resolved anew against the new context.The registration update operation only describes the use of POST with an empty payload.
Future standards might describe the semantics of using content formats and payloads
with the POST method to update the links of a registration (see ).The update registration request interface is specified as follows:
EP -> RD
POST
{+location}{?lt,con,extra-attrs*}
This is the Location returned by the RD as a result of a successful
earlier registration.
Lifetime (optional). Lifetime of the registration in seconds. Range of 60-4294967295.
If no lifetime is included, the previous last
lifetime set on a previous update or the original registration
(falling back to 90000) SHOULD be used.
Base URI (optional). This parameter updates the Base URI established in the
original registration to a new value.
If the parameter is set in an update, it is stored by the RD as the new
Base URI under which to interpret the relative links present in the payload of the original registration, following
the same restrictions as in the registration.
If the parameter is not set in the request but was set before, the previous
Base URI value is kept unmodified.
If the parameter is not set in the request and was not set before either, the
source address and source port of the update request are stored as the
Base URI.
Additional registration attributes (optional). As with the registration,
the RD processes them if it knows their semantics. Otherwise, unknown
attributes are stored as endpoint attributes, overriding any previously
stored endpoint attributes of the same key.
none (no payload)The following response codes are defined for this interface:
2.04 “Changed” or 204 “No Content” if the update was successfully processed.
4.00 “Bad Request” or 400 “Bad Request”. Malformed request.
4.04 “Not Found” or 404 “Not Found”. Registration does not exist (e.g. may have expired).
5.03 “Service Unavailable” or 503 “Service Unavailable”. Service could not perform the operation.
YESIf the registration update fails with a “Service Unavailable” response
and a Max-Age option or Retry-After header,
the registering endpoint SHOULD retry the operation after the time indicated.
If the registration fails in another way, including request timeouts,
or if the time indicated exceeds the remaining lifetime,
the registering endpoint SHOULD attempt registration again.The following example shows how the registering endpoint updates its registration resource at
an RD using this interface with the example location value: /rd/4521.The following example shows the registering endpoint updating its registration resource at
an RD using this interface with the example location value: /rd/4521. The initial registration by the registering endpoint set the following values:endpoint name (ep)=endpoint1lifetime (lt)=500Base URI (base)=coap://local-proxy-old.example.com:5683payload of The initial state of the Resource Directory is reflected in the following request:The following example shows the registering endpoint changing the Base URI to coaps://new.example.com:5684:The consecutive query returns:The following example shows a client performing and enpoint lookup for all groups.Although RD entries have soft state and will eventually timeout after their
lifetime, the registering endpoint SHOULD explicitly remove an entry from the RD if it
knows it will no longer be available (for example on shut-down). This is
accomplished using a removal interface on the RD by performing a DELETE on
the endpoint resource.The removal request interface is specified as follows:
EP -> RD
DELETE
{+location}
This is the Location returned by the RD as a result of a successful
earlier registration.The following response codes are defined for this interface:
2.02 “Deleted” or 204 “No Content” upon successful deletion
4.00 “Bad Request” or 400 “Bad Request”. Malformed request.
4.04 “Not Found” or 404 “Not Found”. Registration does not exist (e.g. may have expired).
5.03 “Service Unavailable” or 503 “Service Unavailable”. Service could not perform the operation.HTTP support: YESThe following examples shows successful removal of the endpoint from the RD with example location value /rd/4521.Some registering endpoints may wish to manage their links as a collection, and may need to read the current set of links stored in the registration resource, in order to determine link maintenance operations.One or more links MAY be selected by using query filtering as specified in Section 4.1If no links are selected, the Resource Directory SHOULD return an empty payload.The read request interface is specified as follows:
EP -> RD
GET
{+location}{?href,rel,rt,if,ct}
This is the Location returned by the RD as a result of a successful
earlier registration.href,rel,rt,if,ct := link relations and attributes specified in the query in order to select particular links based on their relations and attributes. “href” denotes the URI target of the link. See Sec. 4.1The following response codes are defined for this interface:
2.05 “Content” or 200 “OK” upon success with an application/link-format, application/link-format+cbor, or application/link-format+json payload.
4.00 “Bad Request” or 400 “Bad Request”. Malformed request.
4.04 “Not Found” or 404 “Not Found”. Registration does not exist (e.g. may have expired).
5.03 “Service Unavailable” or 503 “Service Unavailable”. Service could not perform the operation.HTTP support: YESThe following examples show successful read of the endpoint links from the RD, with example location value /rd/4521 and example registration payload of .An iPATCH (or PATCH) update () can add, remove or change the links of a registration.Those operations are out of scope of this document, and will require media types suitable for modifying sets of links.Endpoint lookups result in links to registration resources.
Endpoint registration resources are annotated with their endpoint names (ep), sectors (d, if present) and registration base URI (base) as well as a constant resource type (rt=”core.rd-ep”); the lifetime (lt) is not reported.
Additional endpoint attributes are added as link attributes to their endpoint link unless their specification says otherwise.Serializations derived from Link Format, SHOULD present links to endpoints in path-absolute form or, if required, as absolute references. (This approach avoids the RFC6690 ambiguities.)While Endpoint Lookup does expose the registration resources,
the RD does not need to make them accessible to clients.
Clients SHOULD NOT attempt to dereference or manipulate them.A Resource Directory can report endpoints in lookup that are not hosted at the same address.
Lookup clients MUST be prepared to see arbitrary URIs as registration resources in the results
and treat them as opaque identifiers;
the precise semantics of such links are left to future specifications.The following example shows a client performing an endpoint type (et) lookup with the value oic.d.sensor (which is currently a registered rt value):Understanding the semantics of a link-format document and its URI references is
a journey through different documents ( defining URIs,
defining link-format documents based on which defines link headers,
and providing the transport). This appendix summarizes
the mechanisms and semantics at play from an entry in .well-known/core to a
resource lookup.This text is primarily aimed at people entering the field of Constrained
Restful Environments from applications that previously did not use web
mechanisms.At all examples in this section give compatible results for both
Modernized and RFC6690 Link Format;
the explanation of the steps follow Modernized Link Format.Let’s start this example with a very simple host, 2001:db8:f0::1. A client
that follows classical CoAP Discovery ( Section 7), sends the
following multicast request to learn about neighbours supporting resources with
resource-type “temperature”.The client sends a link-local multicast:where the response is sent by the server, [2001:db8:f0::1]:5683.While the client – on the practical or implementation side – can just go
ahead and create a new request to [2001:db8:f0::1]:5683 with Uri-Path:
temp, the full resolution steps for insertion into and retrieval from the RD without any shortcuts are:The client parses the single returned record. The link’s target (sometimes
called “href”) is “/temp”, which is a relative URI that needs resolving.
The base
URI <coap://[ff02::fd]:5683/.well-known/core> is used to resolve the
reference /temp against.The Base URI of the requested resource can be composed from the header options of the CoAP GET request by following the steps of
section 6.5 (with an addition at the end of 8.2) into
“coap://[2001:db8:f0::1]/.well-known/core”.Because “/temp” starts with a single slash,
the record’s target is resolved by replacing the path “/.well-known/core”
from the Base URI (section 5.2 ) with the relative target URI “/temp” into
“coap://[2001:db8:f0::1]/temp”.Some more information but the record’s target can be obtained from the payload:
the resource type of the target is “temperature”, and its content type is
text/plain (ct=0).A relation in a web link is a three-part statement that specifies a named relation between the so-called “context resource”
and the target resource, like “This page has its table
of contents at /toc.html”. In and modernized link-format documents,
there is an implicit “host relation” specified with default parameter: rel=”hosts”.In our example, the context resource of the link is the URI specified in the GET request “coap:://[2001:db8:f0::1]/.well-known/core”. A full English expression of the “host relation” is:‘coap://[2001:db8:f0::1]/.well-known/core is hosting the resource
coap://[2001:db8:f0::1]/temp, which is of the resource type “temperature” and
can be accessed using the text/plain content format.’Omitting the rt=temperature filter, the discovery query would
have given some more records in the payload:Parsing the third record, the client encounters the “anchor” parameter. It is
a URI relative to the Base URI of the request and is thus resolved to
“coap://[2001:db8:f0::1]/sensors/temp”.
That is the context resource of the link, so the “rel” statement is not about
the target and the Base URI any more, but about the target and the resolved
URI. Thus, the third record could be read as
“coap://[2001:db8:f0::1]/sensors/temp has an alternate representation at
coap://[2001:db8:f0::1]/t”.Following the same resolution steps, the fourth record can be read as “coap://[2001:db8:f0::1]/sensors/temp is
described by http://www.example.com/sensors/t123”.The resource directory tries to carry the semantics obtainable by classical
CoAP discovery over to the resource lookup interface as faithfully as possible.For the following queries, we will assume that the simple host has used Simple
Registration to register at the resource directory that was announced to it,
sending this request from its UDP port [2001:db8:f0::1]:6553:The resource directory would have accepted the registration, and queried the
simple host’s .well-known/core by itself. As a result, the host is registered
as an endpoint in the RD with the name “simple-host1”. The registration is
active for 90000 seconds, and the endpoint registration Base URI is
“coap://[2001:db8:f0::1]” following the resolution steps described in . It should be remarked that the Base URI constructed that way always yields a URI of the form: scheme://authority without path suffix.If the client now queries the RD as it would previously have issued a multicast
request, it would go through the RD discovery steps by fetching
coap://[2001:db8:f0::ff]/.well-known/core?rt=core.rd-lookup-res, obtain
coap://[2001:db8:f0::ff]/rd-lookup/res as the resource lookup endpoint, and
issue a request to coap://[2001:db8:f0::ff]/rd-lookup/res?rt=temperature to
receive the following data:This is not literally the same response that it would have received from a
multicast request, but it contains the equivalent statement:‘coap://[2001:db8:f0::1] is hosting the resource
coap://[2001:db8:f0::1]/temp, which is of the resource type “temperature” and
can be accessed using the text/plain content format.’(The difference is whether / or /.well-known/core hosts the resources,
which is one of the often misunderstood subtleties Modernized Link Format addresses. Actually, /.well-known/core does NOT host the resource but stores a URI reference to the resource.)To complete the examples, the client could also query all resources hosted at
the endpoint with the known endpoint name “simple-host1”. A request to
coap://[2001:db8:f0::ff]/rd-lookup/res?ep=simple-host1 would returnAll the target and anchor references are already in absolute form there, which
don’t need to be resolved any further.Had the simple host done an equivalent full registration with a base= parameter (e.g.
?ep=simple-host1&base=coap+tcp://simple-host1.example.com), that context would
have been used to resolve the relative anchor values instead, givingand analogous records.While link-format and Link headers look very similar and are based on the same
model of typed links, there are some differences between and
, which are dealt with differently:“Resolving the target against the anchor”:
Section 2.1 states that the anchor of a link is used as the Base URI
against which the term inside the angle brackets (the target) is resolved,
falling back to the resource’s URI with paths stripped off (its “Origin”).
In contrast to that,
Section B.2 describes that the anchor is immaterial to the
resolution of the target reference.
RFC6690, in the same section, also states that absent anchors set the context of
the link to the target’s URI with its path stripped off, while according to
Section 3.2, the context is the resource’s base URI.
In the context of a Resource Directory, the authors decided to not let
this become an issue by recommending that links in the Resource Directory
be deserializable by either rule set to give the same results.
Note that all examples of , and this document comply with that rule.
The Modernized Link Format is introduced in to formalize what
it means to apply the ruleset of RFC8288 to Link Format documents.There is no percent encoding in link-format documents.
A link-format document is a UTF-8 encoded string of Unicode characters and
does not have percent encoding, while Link headers are practically ASCII
strings that use percent encoding for non-ASCII characters, stating the
encoding explicitly when required.
For example, while a Link header in a page about a Swedish city might read Link: </temperature/Malm%C3%B6>;rel="live-environment-data"
a link-format document from the same source might describe the link as </temperature/Malmö>;rel="live-environment-data"
Parsers and producers of link-format and header data need to be aware of this
difference. [ This appendix should not show up in a published version of this document. ]The protocol negotiation that is being worked on in
makes use of the Resource Directory.Until that document is update to use the latest resource-directory
specification, here are some examples of protocol negotiation with the current
Resource Directory:An endpoint could register as follows from its address [2001:db8:f1::2]:5683:An endpoint lookup would just reflect the registered attributes:A UDP client would then see the following in a resource lookup:while a TCP capable client could say:The CoRE Link Format as described in is unsuitable for some use cases
of the Resource Directory, and their resolution scheme is often misunderstood
by developers familiar with .For the correct application of base URIs, we describe the interpretation of a
Link Format document as a Modernized Link Format. In Modernized Link Format,
the document is processed as in Link Format, with the exception of Section 2.1
of :The URI-reference inside angle brackets (“<>”) describes the target URI
of the link.The context of the link is expressed by the “anchor” parameter. If
the anchor attribute is absent, it defaults to the empty reference
(“”).Both these references are resolved according to Section 5 of .Content formats derived from which inherit its resolution rules,
like JSON and CBOR link format of , can be
interpreted in analogy to that.For where the Resource Directory is concerned, all common forms of links (e.g.
all the examples of RFC6690) yield identical results. When interpreting data
read from .well-known/core, differences in interpretation only affect links
where the absent anchor attribute means coap://host/ according to RFC6690 and
coap://host/.well-known/core according to Modernized Link format; those
typically only occur in conjunction with the vaguely defined implicit “hosts”
relationship.When developing endpoints, i.e. when generating documents that will be submitted
to a Resource Directory, the differences between Modernized Link Format and
RFC6690 can be ignored as long asall relative references start with a slash,and any of the following applies:There is no anchor attribute, and the context of the link does not matter to
the application.
Example:
</sensors>;ct=40The anchor is a relative reference.
Example:
</t>;anchor="/sensors/temp";rel="alternate"The target is an absolute reference.
Example:
<http://www.example.com/sensors/t123>;anchor="/sensors/temp";rel="describedby"Examples of links with different interpretations from either applying RFC6690
or Modernized Link Format are shown here. The example is assumed to be obtained
from a </device/index> document.<sensors>: The target is /sensors in RFC6690 and /device/sensors
in Modernized Link Format
(whereas </sensors> would be unambiguous).<?which=these>: The target is /?which=these in RFC6690 and
/device/index?which=these in Modernized Link Format.<sensors>;anchor="http://example.com/calib-proto/1234";rel="topic"
is about http://example.com/sensors in RFC6690 and about /device/sensors
in Modernized Link Format.
This link can not be expressed in RFC6690 link format without the server
explicitly expressing most of its own URI (which is problematic in reverse
proxy scenarios or when the Uri-Host option is not sent).</i>;rel="alternate";anchor="": According to RFC6690, this states that the /
resource has an alternative representation at /i, whereas Modernized Link
Format says that /devices/index has an alternative representation at /i.
The anchor attribute is usually left out; the link </i>;rel="alternate"
is equivalent to the above and results in the same interpretations.