I-name

I-names are one form of an XRI — an OASIS open standard for digital identifiers designed for sharing resources and data across domains and applications. I-names are human readable XRIs intended to be as easy as possible for people to remember and use. For example, a personal i-name could be =Mary or =Mary.Jones. An organizational i-name could be @Acme or @Acme.Corporation.

One problem XRIs are designed to solve is persistent addressing — how to maintain an address that does not need to change no matter how often the contact details of a person or organization change. XRIs accomplish this by adding a new layer of abstraction over the existing numbering and DNS naming layers used on the Internet today (as well as over other type of addresses, such as phone numbers or instant messaging addresses). Such an abstraction layer is not new — URNs (Uniform Resource Names) and other persistent identifier architectures have the same effect. What's different about the XRI layer is that it offers a single uniform syntax and resolution protocol for two different types of identifiers:

I-names are identifiers resembling domain names, designed for simplicity and ease of use. Though typically long-lived, i-names may, like domain names, be transferred or reassigned to another resource by their owners. For example, a company that changes its corporate name could sell its old i-name to another company, while both companies could retain their original i-numbers. What most differentiates i-names from domain names is that in practice they will have a synonymous (equivalent) persistent i-number (below).

I-numbers are machine readable identifiers (similar to IP addresses) that are assigned to a resource (for instance, a person, organization, application or file) and never reassigned. This means an i-number can always be used to address a network representation of the resource as long it remains available anywhere on the network. I-numbers, like IP addresses, are designed to be efficient for network routers to process and resolve.

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