CoRE Resource Directory

CoRE Resource Directory ARM

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SmartThings

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Universitaet Bremen TZI

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Internet CoRE CoRE, Web Linking, Resource Discovery, Resource Directory In many IoT 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 contains information about resources held on other servers, allowing lookups to be performed for those resources. The input to an RD is composed of links and the output is composed of links constructed from the information stored in the RD. 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 information on resources. Furthermore, new target attributes useful in conjunction with an RD are defined. Note to Readers Discussion of this document takes place on the CORE Working Group mailing list (core@ietf.org), which is archived at https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/core/. Source for this draft and an issue tracker can be found at https://github.com/core-wg/resource-directory.

Introduction In the work on Constrained RESTful Environments (CoRE), a REST architecture suitable for constrained nodes (e.g. with limited RAM and ROM ) and networks (e.g. 6LoWPAN ) has been established and is used in Internet-of-Things (IoT) or 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 constrained 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 contains information about 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 information on resources. Furthermore, new target 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 .

Terminology 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:

resolve against: 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.
Resource Directory: 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.
Sector: 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: 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.
Registration Base URI: 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.
Target: 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.
Context: 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.
Directory Resource: A resource in the Resource Directory (RD) containing registration resources.
Registration Resource: A resource in the RD that contains information about an Endpoint and its links.
Commissioning Tool: 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: Registrant-ep is the endpoint that is registered into the RD. The registrant-ep can register itself, or a CT registers the registrant-ep.
RDAO: Resource Directory Address Option. A new IPv6 Neighbor Discovery option defined for announcing a Resource Directory's address.

Architecture and Use Cases

Principles 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 information about resources hosted by other devices that could otherwise only be obtained by directly querying the /.well-known/core resource on these other devices, either by a unicast request or a multicast request. Information SHOULD only be stored in the resource directory if it can be obtained by 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 to the information in the Resource Directory do not propagate automatically back to the web servers from where the information originated.

Architecture The resource directory architecture is illustrated in . A Resource Directory (RD) is used as a repository of registrations 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 resource directory registrations, and for endpoints to lookup resources from the RD. An RD can be logically segmented by the use of Sectors. A mechanism to discover an RD using CoRE Link Format is defined. Registrations in the RD are soft state and need to be periodically refreshed. An endpoint uses specific interfaces to register, update and remove a registration. It is also possible for an RD to fetch Web Links from endpoints and add their contents to resource directory registrations. At the first registration of an endpoint, 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 registrations. A lookup interface for discovering any of the Web Links stored in the RD is provided using the CoRE Link Format.

The resource directory architecture. 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 fall-back path for a single registration.

RD Content Model 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.

a set of links belonging to the hosting web server

The 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 format (ct)). These provide additional information about the target URI.

E-R Model of the content of the Resource Directory \\\\\///// | 0+ | ooooooo 1 +---------------+ o base o-------| registration | ooooooo +---------------+ | | 1 | +--------------+ oooooooo 1 | | o href o----+ /////\\\\ oooooooo | < contains > | \\\\\///// oooooooo 1 | | o ep o----+ | 0+ oooooooo | +------------------+ | | link | oooooooo 0-1 | +------------------+ o d o----+ | oooooooo | | 1 oooooooo | +-----o target o oooooooo 1 | | oooooooo o lt o----+ ooooooooooo 0+ | oooooooo | o target o-----+ | o attribute o | 0+ oooooo ooooooooooo 0+ | ooooooooooo +-----o rel o o endpoint o----+ | oooooo o attribute o | ooooooooooo | 1 ooooooooo +----o context o ooooooooo ]]> The model shown in models the contents of the resource directory which contains in addition to /.well-known/core:

0 to n Registrations 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:

an endpoint name ("ep", a Unicode string) unique within a sector
a 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", a Unicode string)
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 .

Link-local addresses and zone identifiers Registration Base URIs can contain link-local IP addresses. To be usable across hosts, those can not be serialized to contain zone identifiers (see Section 1). Link-local addresses can only be used on a single link (therefore RD servers can not announce them when queried on a different link), and lookup clients using them need to keep track of which interface they got them from. Therefore, it is advisable in many scenarios to use addresses with larger scope if available.

Use Case: Cellular M2M 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.

Use Case: Home and Building Automation 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. Two phases can be discerned for a network servicing the system: (1) installation and (2) operation. During the operational phase, the network is connected to the Internet with a Border router (6LBR) and the nodes connected to the network can use the Internet services that are provided by the Internet Provider or the network administrator. During the installation phase, the network is completely stand-alone, no 6LBR is connected, and the network only supports the IP communication between the connected nodes. The installation phase is usually followed by the operational phase.

Use Case: Link Catalogues 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 encoded in URNs , 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.

RD discovery and other interface-independent components This and the following sections define the required set of REST interfaces between a Resource Directory (RD), endpoints and lookup clients. Although the examples throughout these sections assume the use of CoAP , these REST interfaces can also be realized using HTTP . Only multicast discovery operations are not possible on HTTP, and Simple Registration can not be executed as base attribute (which is mandatory for HTTP) can not be used there. In all definitions in these sections, 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. All operations on the contents of the Resource Directory MUST be atomic and idempotent. For several operations, interface templates are given in list form; those describe the operation participants, request codes, URIs, content formats and outcomes. Sections of those templates contain normative content about Interaction, Method, URI Template and URI Template Variables 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. REST clients (registrant-EPs / CTs, lookup clients, RD servers during simple registrations) MUST be prepared to receive any unsuccessful code and act upon it according to its definition, options and/or payload to the best of their capabilities, falling back to failing the operation if recovery is not possible. In particular, they should retry the request upon 5.03 (Service Unavailable; 503 in HTTP) according to the Max-Age (Retry-After in HTTP) option, and fall back to link-format when receiving 4.15 (Unsupported Content-Format; 415 in HTTP). 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.

Finding a Resource Directory A (re-)starting device may want to find one or more resource directories for discovery purposes. Dependent on the operational conditions, one or more of the techniques below apply. 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, as outlined in .

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.

When answering a multicast request directed at a link-local address, the RD may want to respond from a routable address; this makes it easier for registrants to use one of their own routable addresses for registration. 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. The following RD discovery mechanisms are recommended:

In managed networks with border routers that need stand-alone operation, the RDAO option is recommended (e.g. operational phase described in ).
In managed networks without border router (no Internet services available), the use of a preconfigured anycast address is recommended (e.g. installation phase described in ).
In networks managed using DNS-SD, the use of DNS-SD for discovery as described in is recommended.

The use of multicast discovery in mesh networks is NOT recommended.

Resource Directory Address Option (RDAO) 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, for instance 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:

Resource Directory Address Option

Using DNS-SD to discover a resource directory A resource directory can advertise its presence in DNS-SD using the service name _core-rd._udp (for CoAP), _core-rd-dtls._udp (for CoAP over DTLS), _core-rd._tcp (for CoAP over TCP) or _core-rd-tls._tcp (for CoAP over TLS) defined in this document. (For the WebSocket transports of CoAP, no service is defined as DNS-SD is typically unavailable in environments where CoAP over WebSockets is used). The selection of the service indicates the protocol used, and the SRV record points the client to a host name and port to use as a starting point for the URI discovery steps of . This section is a simplified concrete application of the more generic mechanism specified in .

Payload Content Formats 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 SHOULD be able to express all the information expressible in link-format. It MAY be able to express information that is inexpressible in link-format, but those expressions SHOULD be avoided where possible.

URI Discovery 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 after having discovered a host as 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" target 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 at the using the HTTP /.well-known/core resource. 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):

Interaction:

EP and Client -> RD

Method:

GET

URI Template:

/.well-known/core{?rt}

URI Template Variables:

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*"

Accept:

absent, application/link-format or any other media type representing web links

The following response is expected on this interface:

Success:: 2.05 "Content" or 200 "OK" with an application/link-format or other web link payload containing one or more matching entries for the RD resource.

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.

Example discovery exchange ;rt="core.rd";ct=40, ;rt="core.rd-lookup-ep";ct=40, ;rt="core.rd-lookup-res";ct=40, ]]> 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 a CBOR and JSON representation from (which have no numeric values assigned yet, so they are shown as TBD64 and TBD504 as in that draft). 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.

Example discovery exchange indicating additional content-formats ;rt="core.rd";ct="40 65225", ;rt="core.rd-lookup-res";ct="40 TBD64 TBD504";obs, ;rt="core.rd-lookup-ep";ct="40 TBD64 TBD504", ]]> 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 ):

Example exchange of obtaining implementation information ; rel="impl-info" ]]> 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.

Registration 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 or other representations of web links, 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 a registration request targeting a given (ep, d) value pair:

When the (ep, d) value pair of the registration-request is different from any existing registration, a new registration is generated.
When the (ep, d) value pair of the registration-request is equal to an existing registration, the content and parameters of the existing registration are replaced with the content of the registration request.

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. For media types to which applies (i.e. documents in application/link-format), the RD only needs to accept representations in Limited Link Format as described there. Its behavior with representations outside that subset is implementation defined. The registration request interface is specified as follows:

Interaction:

EP -> RD

Method:

POST

URI Template:

{+rd}{?ep,d,lt,base,extra-attrs*}

URI Template Variables:

rd :=: RD registration URI (mandatory). This is the location of the RD, as obtained from discovery.
ep :=: Endpoint name (mostly mandatory). The endpoint name is an identifier that MUST be unique within a sector. As the endpoint name is a Unicode string, it is encoded in UTF-8 (and possibly pct-encoded) during variable expansion (see Section 3.2.1). The endpoint name MUST NOT contain any character in the inclusive ranges 0-31 or 127-159. The maximum length of this parameter is 63 UTF-8 encoded bytes. If the RD is configured to recognize the endpoint (e.g. based on its security context), the RD assigns an endpoint name based on a set of configuration parameter values.
d :=: Sector (optional). The sector to which this endpoint belongs. When this parameter is not present, the RD MAY associate the endpoint with a configured default sector or leave it empty. The sector is encoded like the ep parameter, and is limited to 63 UTF-8 encoded bytes as well. The endpoint name and sector name are not set when one or both are set in an accompanying authorization token.
lt :=: Lifetime (optional). Lifetime of the registration in seconds. Range of 1-4294967295. If no lifetime is included in the initial registration, a default value of 90000 (25 hours) SHOULD be assumed.
base :=: 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. The Base URI is consecutively constructed by concatenating the used protocol'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.
: A registrant that can not be reached by potential lookup clients at the address it registers from (e.g. because it is behind some form of Network Address Translation (NAT)) MUST provide a reachable base address with its registration.
: If the Base URI contains a link-local IP literal, it MUST NOT contain a Zone Identifier, and MUST be local to the link on which the registration request is received.
: 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. Those applications should use different representations of links to which is not applicable (e.g. ).
extra-attrs :=: 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.

Content-Format:

application/link-format or any other indicated media type representing web links

The following response is expected on this interface:

Success:: 2.01 "Created" or 201 "Created". The Location-Path option or Location header field 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.

If the registration fails, including request timeouts, or if delays from Service Unavailable responses with Max-Age or Retry-After accumulate to exceed the registrant's configured timeouts, 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 .

Example registration payload ;ct=41;rt="temperature-c";if="sensor", ; anchor="/sensors/temp";rel="describedby" Res: 2.01 Created Location-Path: /rd/4521 ]]> A Resource Directory may optionally support HTTP. Here is an example of almost the same registration operation above, when done using HTTP.

Example registration payload as expressed using HTTP ;ct=41;rt="temperature-c";if="sensor", ; anchor="/sensors/temp";rel="describedby" Res: HTTP/1.1 201 Created Location: /rd/4521 ]]>

Simple Registration 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 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 registrant-ep's network address (as is default with regular registrations). Example request from registrant-EP to RD (unanswered until the next step):

First half example exchange of a simple registration

The Resource Directory queries the registrant-ep's discovery resource to determine the success of the operation. It SHOULD keep a cache of the discovery resource and not query it again as long as it is fresh. Example request from the RD to the registrant-EP:

Example exchange of the RD querying the simple endpoint ]]> With this response, the RD would answer the previous step's request:

Second half example exchange of a simple registration The sequence of fetching the registration content before sending a successful response was chosen to make responses reliable, and the caching item was chosen to still allow very constrained registrants. Registrants MUST be able to serve a GET request to /.well-known/core after having requested registration. Constrained devices MAY regard the initial request as temporarily failed when they need RAM occupied by their own request to serve the RD's GET, and retry later when the RD already has a cached representation of their discovery resources. Then, the RD can reply immediately and the registrant can receive the response. The simple registration request interface is specified as follows:

Interaction:: EP -> RD
Method:: POST
URI Template:: /.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 is expected on this interface:

Success:: 2.04 "Changed".

For 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):

Interaction:: RD -> EP
Method:: GET
URI Template:: /.well-known/core

The following response is expected on this interface:

Success:: 2.05 "Content".

The RD MUST delete registrations created by simple registration after the expiration of their lifetime. Additional operations on the registration resource cannot be executed because no registration location is returned.

Third-party registration 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.

Operations on the Registration Resource This section describes how the registering endpoint can maintain the registrations that it created. The registering endpoint can be the registrant-ep or the CT. An endpoint SHOULD NOT use this interface for registrations that it did not create. The registrations 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 cancel the registration using DELETE, and to perform further operations beyond the scope of this specification. These operations are described below.

Registration Update 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 base URI 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 base URI of the registration is changed in an update, relative references submitted in the original registration or later updates are resolved anew against the new base. 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:

Interaction:

EP -> RD

Method:

POST

URI Template:

{+location}{?lt,base,extra-attrs*}

URI Template Variables:

location :=: This is the Location returned by the RD as a result of a successful earlier registration.
lt :=: Lifetime (optional). Lifetime of the registration in seconds. Range of 1-4294967295. 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 :=: 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.
extra-attrs :=: 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.
: Note that this default behavior does not allow removing an endpoint attribute in an update. For attributes whose functionality depends on the endpoints' ability to remove them in an update, it can make sense to define a value whose presence is equivalent to the absence of a value. As an alternative, an extension can define different updating rules for their attributes. That necessitates either discovery of whether the RD is aware of that extension, or tolerating the default behavior.

Content-Format:

none (no payload)

The following responses are expected on this interface:

Success:: 2.04 "Changed" or 204 "No Content" if the update was successfully processed.
Failure:: 4.04 "Not Found" or 404 "Not Found". Registration does not exist (e.g. may have been removed).

If the registration fails in any way, including "Not Found" and request timeouts, or if the time indicated in a Service Unavailable Max-Age/Retry-After 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.

Example update of a registration 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)=endpoint1
lifetime (lt)=500
Base URI (base)=coap://local-proxy-old.example.com:5683
payload of

The initial state of the Resource Directory is reflected in the following request:

Example lookup before a change to the base address ;ct=41; rt="temperature-c";if="sensor"; anchor="coap://local-proxy-old.example.com:5683/", ; anchor="coap://local-proxy-old.example.com:5683/sensors/temp";rel="describedby" ]]> The following example shows the registering endpoint changing the Base URI to coaps://new.example.com:5684:

Example registration update that changes the base address The consecutive query returns:

Example lookup after a change to the base address ;ct=41; rt="temperature-c";if="sensor"; anchor="coap://new.example.com:5684/", ; anchor="coap://new.example.com:5684/sensors/temp";rel="describedby" ]]>

Registration Removal Although RD registrations 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:

Interaction:

EP -> RD

Method:

DELETE

URI Template:

{+location}

URI Template Variables:

location :=: This is the Location returned by the RD as a result of a successful earlier registration.

The following responses are expected on this interface:

Success:: 2.02 "Deleted" or 204 "No Content" upon successful deletion
Failure:: 4.04 "Not Found" or 404 "Not Found". Registration does not exist (e.g. may already have been removed).

The following examples shows successful removal of the endpoint from the RD with example location value /rd/4521.

Example of a registration removal

Further operations Additional operations on the registration can be specified in future documents, for example:

Send iPATCH (or PATCH) updates () to add, remove or change the links of a registration.
Use GET to read the currently stored set of links in a registration resource.

Those operations are out of scope of this document, and will require media types suitable for modifying sets of links.

RD Lookup 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. JSON or CBOR link format ) or using more advanced interfaces (e.g. supporting context or semantic based lookup) on different resources that are discovered independently. 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 Types

Lookup Type	Resource Type	Mandatory
Resource	core.rd-lookup-res	Mandatory
Endpoint	core.rd-lookup-ep	Mandatory

Resource lookup Resource 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. If the base URI of a registration contains a link-local address, the RD MUST NOT show its links unless the lookup was made from the same link. The RD MUST NOT include zone identifiers in the resolved URIs.

Lookup filtering Using the Accept Option, the requester can control whether the returned list is returned in CoRE Link Format (application/link-format, default) or in alternate content-formats (e.g. from ). 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. The anchor attribute is usable for resource lookups, and, if queried, MUST be for in URI form as well. 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:

Interaction:

Client -> RD

Method:

GET

URI Template:

{+type-lookup-location}{?page,count,search*}

URI Template Variables:

type-lookup-location :=: RD Lookup URI for a given lookup type (mandatory). The address is discovered as described in .
search :=: Search criteria for limiting the number of results (optional).
page :=: 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 :=: 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.

Accept:

absent, application/link-format or any other indicated media type representing web links

The following responses codes are defined for this interface:

Success:: 2.05 "Content" or 200 "OK" with an application/link-format or other web link payload containing matching entries for the lookup. The payload can contain zero links (which is an empty payload in link format, but could also be [] in JSON based formats), indicating that no entities matched the request.

Resource lookup examples 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 :

Example a resource lookup ;rt="temperature"; anchor="coap://[2001:db8:3::123]:61616" ]]> A client that wants to be notified of new resources as they show up can use observation:

Example an observing resource lookup ;rt="light"; anchor="coap://[2001:db8:3::124]", ;rt="light"; anchor="coap://[2001:db8:3::124]", ;rt="light"; anchor="coap://[2001:db8:3::124]" ]]> The following example shows a client performing a paginated resource lookup

Examples of paginated resource lookup ;rt=sensor;ct=60; anchor="coap://[2001:db8:3::123]:61616", ;rt=sensor;ct=60; anchor="coap://[2001:db8:3::123]:61616", ;rt=sensor;ct=60; anchor="coap://[2001:db8:3::123]:61616", ;rt=sensor;ct=60; anchor="coap://[2001:db8:3::123]:61616", ;rt=sensor;ct=60; anchor="coap://[2001:db8:3::123]:61616" Req: GET /rd-lookup/res?page=1&count=5 Res: 2.05 Content ;rt=sensor;ct=60; anchor="coap://[2001:db8:3::123]:61616", ;rt=sensor;ct=60; anchor="coap://[2001:db8:3::123]:61616", ;rt=sensor;ct=60; anchor="coap://[2001:db8:3::123]:61616", ;rt=sensor;ct=60; anchor="coap://[2001:db8:3::123]:61616", ;rt=sensor;ct=60; anchor="coap://[2001:db8:3::123]:61616" ]]> The following example shows a client performing a lookup of all resources 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:

Example of resource lookup from multiple endpoints ;ct=40;title="Sensor Index"; anchor="coap://sensor1.example.com", ;rt="temperature-c"; if="sensor"; anchor="coap://sensor1.example.com", ;rt="light-lux"; if="sensor"; anchor="coap://sensor1.example.com", ;rel="describedby"; anchor="coap://sensor1.example.com/sensors/temp", ;rel="alternate"; anchor="coap://sensor1.example.com/sensors/temp", ;ct=40;title="Sensor Index"; anchor="coap://sensor2.example.com", ;rt="temperature-c"; if="sensor"; anchor="coap://sensor2.example.com", ;rt="light-lux"; if="sensor"; anchor="coap://sensor2.example.com", ;rel="describedby"; anchor="coap://sensor2.example.com/sensors/temp", ;rel="alternate"; anchor="coap://sensor2.example.com/sensors/temp" ]]>

Endpoint lookup The endpoint lookup returns registration resources which can only be manipulated by the registering endpoint. Endpoint registration resources are annotated with their endpoint names (ep), sectors (d, if present) and registration base URI (base; reports the registrant-ep's address if no explicit base was given) as well as a constant resource type (rt="core.rd-ep"); the lifetime (lt) is not reported. Additional endpoint attributes are added as target attributes to their endpoint link unless their specification says otherwise. Links to endpoints SHOULD be presented in path-absolute form or, if required, as (full) URIs. (This avoids the RFC6690 ambiguities.) Base addresses that contain link-local addresses MUST NOT include zone identifiers, and such registrations MUST NOT be shown unless the lookup was made from the same link from which the registration was made. 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):

Examples of endpoint lookup ;base="coap://[2001:db8:3::127]:61616";ep="node5"; et="oic.d.sensor";ct="40";rt="core.rd-ep", ;base="coap://[2001:db8:3::129]:61616";ep="node7"; et="oic.d.sensor";ct="40";d="floor-3";rt="core.rd-ep" ]]>

Security policies 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.

Secure RD discovery 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.

Secure RD filtering 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.

Secure endpoint Name assignment 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 (see Section 4.1.2.2). 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.

Security Considerations The security considerations as described in Section 5 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.

Endpoint Identification and Authentication An Endpoint (name, sector) pair is unique within the et of endpoints registered 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 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.

Denial of Service Attacks 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 Considerations

Resource Types 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 :

Value	Description	Reference
core.rd	Directory resource of an RD	RFCTHIS
core.rd-lookup-res	Resource lookup of an RD	RFCTHIS
core.rd-lookup-ep	Endpoint lookup of an RD	RFCTHIS
core.rd-ep	Endpoint resource of an RD	RFCTHIS

IPv6 ND Resource Directory Address Option This document registers one new ND option type under the sub-registry "IPv6 Neighbor Discovery Option Formats":

Resource Directory Address Option (TBD38)

[ The RFC editor is asked to replace TBD38 with the assigned number in the document; the value 38 is suggested. ]

RD Parameter Registry 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 include

the human readable name of the parameter,
the short name as used in query parameters or target 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 target attribute,
validity requirements if any,
a description,
and a link to reference documentation.

The query parameter MUST be both a valid URI query key and a token 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: RD Parameters

Full name	Short	Validity	Use	Description
Endpoint Name	ep	Unicode*	RLA	Name of the endpoint
Lifetime	lt	1-4294967295	R	Lifetime of the registration in seconds
Sector	d	Unicode*	RLA	Sector to which this endpoint belongs
Registration Base URI	base	URI	RLA	The scheme, address and port and path at which this server is available
Page	page	Integer	L	Used for pagination
Count	count	Integer	L	Used for pagination
Endpoint Type	et		RLA	Semantic type of the endpoint (see )

(Short: Short name used in query parameters or target attributes. Validity: Unicode* = 63 Bytes of UTF-8 encoded Unicode, with no control characters as per . Use: R = used at registration, L = used at lookup, A = expressed in target attribute The 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. All their reference documentation entries point to 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 target 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 target attribute). It is expected that the registry will receive between 5 and 50 registrations in total over the next years.

Full description of the "Endpoint Type" Registration Parameter 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.

"Endpoint Type" (et=) RD Parameter values 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 .

Multicast Address Registration IANA is asked to assign the following multicast addresses for use by CoAP nodes: IPv4 - "all CoRE resource directories" address MCD2 (suggestion: 224.0.1.189), from the "IPv4 Multicast Address Space Registry". 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. [ The RFC editor is asked to replace MCD1 and MCD2 with the assigned addresses throughout the document. ]

Well-Kown URIs IANA is asked to extend the reference for the "core" URI suffix in the "Well-Known URIs" registry to reference this document next to , as this defines the resource's behavior for POST requests.

Service Names and Transport Protocol Port Number Registry IANA is asked to enter four new items into the Service Names and Transport Protocol Port Number Registry:

Service name: "core-rd", Protocol: "udp", Description: "Resource Directory accessed using CoAP"
Service name "core-rd-dtls", Protocol: "udp", Description: "Resource Directory accedded using CoAP over DTLS"
Service name: "core-rd", Protocol: "tcp", Description: "Resource Directory accessed using CoAP over TCP"
Service name "core-rd-tls", Protocol: "tcp", Description: "Resource Directory accedded using CoAP over TLS"

All in common have this document as their reference.

Examples Two examples are presented: a Lighting Installation example in and a LWM2M example in .

Lighting Installation 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.

Installation Characteristics 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: interface SLAAC addresses

Name	IPv6 address
luminary1	2001:db8:4::1
luminary2	2001:db8:4::2
Presence sensor	2001:db8:4::3
Resource directory	2001:db8:4::ff

In the use of resource directory during installation is presented.

RD entries 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: Resource Directory identifiers

Name	endpoint	resource path	resource type
luminary1	lm_R2-4-015_wndw	/light/left	light
luminary1	lm_R2-4-015_wndw	/light/middle	light
luminary1	lm_R2-4-015_wndw	/light/right	light
luminary2	lm_R2-4-015_door	/light/left	light
luminary2	lm_R2-4-015_door	/light/middle	light
luminary2	lm_R2-4-015_door	/light/right	light
Presence sensor	ps_R2-4-015_door	/ps	p-sensor

It 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:

Example of registrations a CT enters into an RD ;rt="light", ;rt="light", ;rt="light" Res: 2.01 Created Location-Path: /rd/4521 Req: POST coap://[2001:db8:4::ff]/rd ?ep=lm_R2-4-015_door&base=coap://[2001:db8:4::2]&d=R2-4-015 Payload: ;rt="light", ;rt="light", ;rt="light" Res: 2.01 Created Location-Path: /rd/4522 Req: POST coap://[2001:db8:4::ff]/rd ?ep=ps_R2-4-015_door&base=coap://[2001:db8:4::3]d&d=R2-4-015 Payload: ;rt="p-sensor" Res: 2.01 Created Location-Path: /rd/4523 ]]> 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.

Example of a multicast group a CT enters into an RD ;rt="light", ;rt="light", ;rt="light" Res: 2.01 Created Location-Path: /rd/501 ]]> 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:

Example of a lookup exchange to find suitable multicast addresses ;ep="grp_R2-4-015";et="core.rd-group"; base="coap://[ff05::1]";rt="core.rd-ep" ]]> 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 .

Example use of direct multicast address configuration 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.

OMA Lightweight M2M (LWM2M) Example 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 LWM2M Object Model 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 URI object-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 ID resource-id := OMNA (OMA Name Authority) registered resource ID (0-65535) or "undefined" to refer to all resources within an instance resource-instance := Resource instance identifier or "undefined" to refer to single instance of a resource LWM2M 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 Register Endpoint 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: LWM2M Additional Registration Parameters

Name	Query	Validity	Description
Binding Mode	b	{"U",UQ","S","SQ","US","UQS"}	Available Protocols

LWM2M Version	ver	1.0	Spec Version

SMS Number	sms		MSISDN

The 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.

LWM2M Update Endpoint Registration 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 De-Register Endpoint 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 .

Acknowledgments 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, Jan Newmarch, Matthias Kovatsch, Jaime Jimenez and Ted Lemon 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.

Changelog changes from -23 to -24

Discovery using DNS-SD added again
Minimum lifetime (lt) reduced from 60 to 1
References added
IANA considerations
- added about .well-known/core resource
- added DNS-SD service names
- made RDAO option number a suggestion
- added "reference" field to endpoint type registry
Lookup: mention that anchor is a legitimate lookup attribute
Terminology and example fixes
Layout fixes, esp. the use of non-ASCII characters in figures

changes from -22 to -23

Explain that updates can not remove attributes
Typo fixes

changes from -21 to -22

Request a dedicated IPv4 address from IANA (rather than sharing with All CoAP nodes)
Fix erroneous examples
Editorial changes
- Add figure numbers to examples
- Update RD parameters table to reflect changes of earlier versions in the text
- Typos and minor wording

changes from -20 to -21 (Processing comments during WGLC)

Defer outdated description of using DNS-SD to find an RD to the defining document
Describe operational conditions in automation example
Recommend particular discovery mechanisms for some managed network scenarios

changes from -19 to -20 (Processing comments from the WG chair review)

Define the permissible characters in endpoint and sector names
Express requirements on NAT situations in more abstract terms
Shifted heading levels to have the interfaces on the same level
Group instructions for error handling into general section
Simple Registration: process reflowed into items list
Updated introduction to reflect state of CoRE in general, reference RFC7228 (defining "constrained") and use "IoT" term in addition to "M2M"
Update acknowledgements
Assorted editorial changes
- Unify examples style
- Terminology: RDAO defined and not only expanded
- Add CT to
- Consistency in the use of the term "Content Format"

changes from -18 to -19

link-local addresses: allow but prescribe split-horizon fashion when used, disallow zone identifiers
Remove informative references to documents not mentioned any more

changes from -17 to -18

Rather than re-specifying link format (Modernized Link Format), describe a Limited Link Format that's the uncontested subset of Link Format
Acknowledging the -17 version as part of the draft
Move "Read endpoint links" operation to future specification like PATCH
Demote links-json to an informative reference, and removed them from exchange examples
Add note on unusability of link-local IP addresses, and describe mitigation.
Reshuffling of sections: Move additional operations and endpoint lookup back from appendix, and groups into one
Lookup interface tightened to not imply applicability for non link-format lookups (as those can have vastly different views on link cardinality)
Simple registration: Change sequence of GET and POST-response, ensuring unsuccessful registrations are reported as such, and suggest how devices that would have required the inverse behavior can still cope with it.
Abstract and introduction reworded to avoid the impression that resources are stored in full in the RD
Simplify the rules governing when a registration resource can or must be changed.
Drop a figure that has become useless due to the changes of and -13 and -17
Wording consistency fixes: Use "Registrations" and "target attributes"
Fix incorrect use of content negotiation in discovery interface description (Content-Format -> Accept)
State that the base attribute value is part of endpoint lookup even when implicit in the registration
Update references from RFC5988 to its update RFC8288
Remove appendix on protocol-negotiation (which had a note to be removed before publication)

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 mechanism
Add groups that are enumerations of shared resources and are a special case of endpoint registrations

changes from -15 to -16

Recommend a common set of resources for members of a group
Clarified use of multicast group in lighting example
Add note on concurrent registrations from one EP being possible but not expected
Refresh web examples appendix to reflect current use of Modernized Link Format
Add examples of URIs where Modernized Link Format matters
Editorial changes

changes from -14 to -15

Rewrite of section "Security policies"
Clarify that the "base" parameter text applies both to relative references both in anchor and href
Renamed "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 examples
Editorial changes

changes from -13 to -14

Rename "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-gp
Registration management moved to appendix A, including endpoint and group lookup
Minor editorial changes
- PATCH/iPATCH is clearly deferred to another document
- Recommend against query / fragment identifier in con=
- Interface description lists are described as illustrative
- Rewording of Simple Registration
Simple 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 more
con/base: Paths are allowed
Registration resource locations can not have query or fragment parts
Default life time extended to 25 hours
clarified registration update rules
lt-value semantics for lookup clarified.
added template for simple registration

changes from -12 to -13

Added "all resource directory" nodes MC address
Clarified observation behavior
version identification
example rt= and et= values
domain from figure 2
more explanatory text
endpoints of a groups hosted by different RD
resolve RFC6690-vs-8288 resolution ambiguities:
- require registered links not to be relative when using anchor
- return absolute URIs in resource lookup

changes from -11 to -12

added Content Model section, including ER diagram
removed domain lookup interface; domains are now plain attributes of groups and endpoints
updated chapter "Finding a Resource Directory"; now distinguishes configuration-provided, network-provided and heuristic sources
improved text on: atomicity, idempotency, lookup with multiple parameters, endpoint removal, simple registration
updated LWM2M description
clarified where relative references are resolved, and how context and anchor interact
new appendix on the interaction with RFCs 6690, 5988 and 3986
lookup interface: group and endpoint lookup return group and registration resources as link targets
lookup interface: search parameters work the same across all entities
removed 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 text
state that lookup resources can be observable
More examples and improved text

changes from -09 to -10

removed "ins" and "exp" link-format extensions.
removed all text concerning DNS-SD.
removed inconsistency in RDAO text.
suggestions taken over from various sources
replaced "Function Set" with "REST API", "base URI", "base path"
moved simple registration to registration section

changes from -08 to -09

clarified the "example use" of the base RD resource values /rd, /rd-lookup, and /rd-group.
changed "ins" ABNF notation.
various editorial improvements, including in examples
clarifications for RDAO

changes from -07 to -08

removed link target value returned from domain and group lookup types
Maximum length of domain parameter 63 bytes for consistency with group
removed 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 that
add IPv6 ND Option for discovery of an RD
clarify group configuration section 6.1 that endpoints must be registered before including them in a group
removed all superfluous client-server diagrams
simplified lighting example
introduced Commissioning Tool
RD-Look-up text is extended.

changes from -06 to -07

added text in the discovery section to allow content format hints to be exposed in the discovery link attributes
editorial updates to section 9
update author information
minor text corrections

Changes from -05 to -06

added note that the PATCH section is contingent on the progress of the PATCH method

changes from -04 to -05

added Update Endpoint Links using PATCH
http access made explicit in interface specification
Added http examples

Changes from -03 to -04:

Added http response codes
Clarified endpoint name usage
Add application/link-format+cbor content-format

Changes from -02 to -03:

Added an example for lighting and DNS integration
Added an example for RD use in OMA LWM2M
Added Read Links operation for link inspection by endpoints
Expanded DNS-SD section
Added draft authors Peter van der Stok and Michael Koster

Changes 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 372

Changes 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.

References Normative References Constrained RESTful Environments (CoRE) Link Format This 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 Levels In 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 Syntax A 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 RFCs Many 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. URI Template A 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 Discovery This 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. Informative References 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] Representing IPv6 Zone Identifiers in Address Literals and Uniform Resource Identifiers This document describes how the zone identifier of an IPv6 scoped address, defined as <zone_id> in the IPv6 Scoped Address Architecture (RFC 4007), can be represented in a literal IPv6 address and in a Uniform Resource Identifier that includes such a literal address. It updates the URI Generic Syntax specification (RFC 3986) accordingly. Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Message Syntax and Routing The 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 data Web Linking This 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. CoAP Protocol Negotiation CoAP 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. 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 the Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP), thus transforming a well-known and widely used authorization solution into a form suitable for IoT devices. Existing specifications are used where possible, but extensions are added and profiles are defined to better serve the IoT use cases. Representing Constrained RESTful Environments (CoRE) Link Format in JSON and CBOR JavaScript 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. CoRE Resource Directory: DNS-SD mapping Resource and service discovery are complementary. Resource discovery provides fine-grained detail about the content of a web server, while service discovery can provide a scalable method to locate servers in large networks. This document defines a method for mapping between CoRE Link Format attributes and DNS-Based Service Discovery records to facilitate the use of either method to locate RESTful service interfaces (APIs) in heterogeneous HTTP/CoAP environments. Terminology for Constrained-Node Networks The Internet Protocol Suite is increasingly used on small devices with severe constraints on power, memory, and processing resources, creating constrained-node networks. This document provides a number of basic terms that have been useful in the standardization work for constrained-node networks. Transmission of IPv6 Packets over IEEE 802.15.4 Networks This document describes the frame format for transmission of IPv6 packets and the method of forming IPv6 link-local addresses and statelessly autoconfigured addresses on IEEE 802.15.4 networks. Additional specifications include a simple header compression scheme using shared context and provisions for packet delivery in IEEE 802.15.4 meshes. [STANDARDS-TRACK] Uniform Resource Names (URNs) A Uniform Resource Name (URN) is a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) that is assigned under the "urn" URI scheme and a particular URN namespace, with the intent that the URN will be a persistent, location-independent resource identifier. With regard to URN syntax, this document defines the canonical syntax for URNs (in a way that is consistent with URI syntax), specifies methods for determining URN-equivalence, and discusses URI conformance. With regard to URN namespaces, this document specifies a method for defining a URN namespace and associating it with a namespace identifier, and it describes procedures for registering namespace identifiers with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). This document obsoletes both RFCs 2141 and 3406. impl-info: A link relation type for disclosing implementation information When 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. The Constrained RESTful Application Language (CoRAL) The Constrained RESTful Application Language (CoRAL) defines a data model and interaction model as well as two specialized serialization formats for the description of typed connections between resources on the Web ("links"), possible operations on such resources ("forms"), as well as simple resource metadata. Internet X.509 Public Key Infrastructure Certificate and Certificate Revocation List (CRL) Profile This memo profiles the X.509 v3 certificate and X.509 v2 certificate revocation list (CRL) for use in the Internet. An overview of this approach and model is provided as an introduction. The X.509 v3 certificate format is described in detail, with additional information regarding the format and semantics of Internet name forms. Standard certificate extensions are described and two Internet-specific extensions are defined. A set of required certificate extensions is specified. The X.509 v2 CRL format is described in detail along with standard and Internet-specific extensions. An algorithm for X.509 certification path validation is described. An ASN.1 module and examples are provided in the appendices. [STANDARDS-TRACK]

Groups Registration and Lookup 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 .

Example registration of a group ;rt="light";if="core.a", ;if="core.p";u="K" Res: 2.01 Created Location-Path: /rd/12 ]]> 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. The following example shows a client performing and endpoint lookup for all groups.

Example lookup of groups ;ep="GRP_R2-4-015";et="core.rd-group"; base="coap://[ff05::1]", ;ep=lights&et=core.rd-group; base="coap://[ff35:30:2001:db8::1]";rt="core.rd-ep" ]]> The following example shows a client performing a lookup of all resources of all endpoints (groups) with et=core.rd-group.

Example lookup of resources inside groups ;rt="light";if="core.a"; et="core.rd-group";anchor="coap://[ff35:30:2001:db8::1]", ;if="core.p";u="K"; et="core.rd-group"; anchor="coap://[ff35:30:2001:db8::1]" ]]>

Web links and the Resource Directory 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 header fields, 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. The explanation of the steps makes some shortcuts in the more confusing details of , which are justified as all examples being in Limited Link Format.

A simple example 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:

Example of direct resource discovery ;rt=temperature;ct=0 ]]> 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:

Resolving the URIs 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 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".

Interpreting attributes and relations 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 format 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 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.'

A slightly more complex example Omitting the rt=temperature filter, the discovery query would have given some more records in the payload:

Extended example of direct resource discovery ;rt=temperature;ct=0, ;rt=light-lux;ct=0, ;anchor="/sensors/temp";rel=alternate, ;anchor="/temp"; rel="describedby" ]]> 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".

Enter the Resource Directory 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:

Example request starting a simple registration 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:

Example payload of a response to a resource lookup ;rt=temperature;ct=0; anchor="coap://[2001:db8:f0::1]" ]]> 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 does not matter in this application; if it did, the endpoint would have been more explicit. 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 return

Extended example payload of a response to a resource lookup ;rt=temperature;ct=0; anchor="coap://[2001:db8:f0::1]", ;rt=light-lux;ct=0; anchor="coap://[2001:db8:f0::1]", ; anchor="coap://[2001:db8:f0::1]/sensors/temp";rel=alternate, ; anchor="coap://[2001:db8:f0::1]/sensors/temp";rel="describedby" ]]> All 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, giving

Example payload of a response to a resource lookup with a dedicated base URI ;rt=temperature;ct=0; anchor="coap+tcp://simple-host1.example.com" ]]> and analogous records.

A note on differences between link-format and Link header fields While link-format and Link header fields 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. The rules introduced in ensure that an RD does not need to deal with those differences when processing input data. Lookup results are required to be absolute references for the same reason.
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 header fields are practically ASCII strings that use percent encoding for non-ASCII characters, stating the encoding explicitly when required. For example, while a Link header field in a page about a Swedish city might read ;rel="live-environment-data" ]]> a link-format document from the same source might describe the link as ;rel="live-environment-data" ]]> Parsers and producers of link-format and header fields need to be aware of this difference.

Limited Link Format The CoRE Link Format as described in has been interpreted differently by implementers, and a strict implementation rules out some use cases of a Resource Directory (e.g. base values with path components). This appendix describes a subset of link format documents called Limited Link Format. The rules herein are not very limiting in practice - all examples in RFC6690, and all deployments the authors are aware of already stick to them - but ease the implementation of resource directory servers. It is applicable to representations in the application/link-format media type, and any other media types that inherit Section 2.1. A link format representation is in Limited Link format if, for each link in it, the following applies:

All URI references either follow the URI or the path-absolute ABNF rule of RFC3986 (i.e. target and anchor each either start with a scheme or with a single slash),
if the anchor reference starts with a scheme, the target reference starts with a scheme as well (i.e. relative references in target cannot be used when the anchor is a full URI), and
the application does not care whether links without an explicitly given anchor have the origin's "/" or "/.well-known/core" resource as their link context.