Guidelines and Assignment Advisory

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Last revision: 14 October 2023

Table of contents

Organization Root OID

Registration Authority

Assignment advisory

OIDs in members(1)

OIDs in products(2)

OIDs in specifications(3)

OIDs in experimental(4)

OIDs in arcs 10, 20, 30, 40, ...

OIDs in freeoid(9000)

OIDs in example(9999)

Guidelines for defining your OIDs

Retired and revoked OIDs

Organization Root OID

Dot-Notation:

1.3.6.1.4.1.37476

ASN.1 notation:

{iso(1) identified-organization(3) dod(6) internet(1) private(4) enterprise(1) 37476}

OID-IRI notation:

/ISO/Identified-Organization/6/1/4/1/37476

The Root OID of ViaThinkSoft is 1.3.6.1.4.1.37476 and was assigned by IANA in February 2011. These Private Enterprise Numbers (PEN) OIDs do not have an ASN.1 or IRI identifier. Therefore, no identifiers can be used for describing the ViaThinkSoft Root OID.

Registration Authority

The Registration Authority (RA) of the ViaThinkSoft Root OID is not assigned to a particular person. Instead, it is assigned to a function called "OID Registration Authority" with the redirection email address oidra@viathinksoft.de (Accepted E-Mail-Languages: German and English) to the currently occupied person, which is currently Daniel Marschall. The person behind this function can be exchanged if necessary. All communication should be with this function's email address rather than using the person's own address.

Currently, there is no clear rule about the postal address or phone/fax number of the OID Registration Authority, since ViaThinkSoft is a decentralized group of software developers and therefore the organisation does not have headquarters.

If an OID declaration does not explicitly state a deviating RA, the RA of the parent OID is used. This is called "inherited RA", and is the default behavior of the ViaThinkSoft OIDplus system.

Assignment advisory

OIDs in members(1)

Each member of ViaThinkSoft gets a free OID under this arc.

The alphanumeric identifier of the OID needs to be exactly the Linux system name of the member.

The OID may be used for non-ViaThinkSoft projects. It is not recommended to use this OID for ViaThinkSoft projects/specifications/etc (use the ViaThinkSoft OIDs instead).

Application of an OID via email to oidra@viathinksoft.de.

For OIDs withhin this arc, you do NOT have to follow specific Guidelines.

OIDs in products(2)

Product specific objects, for example ASN.1 modules used in products shall be added here only.

When you create a project through the Login area of ViaThinkSoft, the project automatically gets an OID assigned under this arc, which may be used by the project leader.

The alphanumeric identifier needs to be the "internal identifier" which is also used for SVN/GIT repositories, etc.

If a project shall be transferred to a different project leader, please contact oidra@viathinksoft.de.

For OIDs withhin this arc, please follow the Guidelines.

OIDs in specifications(3)

Objects, file formats etc. which are not necessarily product specific - especially objects which can be used for data exchange.

The child arcs are defined as follows:

• misc(0): Everything that does not fit into the other categories.
• fileformat(1): Definition of generic (non product specific) data structures which are encoded into files.
• algorithm(2): Generic algorithm definitions (not product or programming language specific).
• interface(3): Definition of generic interfaces, e.g. COM+ interfaces.
• script(4): Individual script languages and notations.
• communication(5): Definitions how systems and applications should communicate. For example, a JSON data structure embedded in another file or transferred inside a foreign protocol. If you want to define a data structure which is saved entirely in a file, then use the arc fileformat(1) instead. If you want to define a data structure which is sent entirely over a TCP/UDP connection, use the arc protocol(6) instead.
• protocol(6): Definitions of data structures sent entirely via network, without usage of other protocols (e.g. HTTP).

For OIDs withhin this arc, please follow the Guidelines.

OIDs in experimental(4)

This arc contains:

• temporary assignments for internal product developments (space holder)
  
  and
  
  
• permanent assignments for released product developments (betas etc.)

The subsequent arc 0 is used for temporary assignments (as place holder). OIDs within this arc are therefore not unique.

As soon as an experiment/beta/etc. is released, the temporary assignment arc "0" must be replaced with an experiment number (starting with 1000), which can be requested from oidra@viathinksoft.de.

For OIDs withhin this arc, please follow the Guidelines.

OIDs in arcs 10, 20, 30, 40, ...

Objects which do ONLY apply to ViaThinkSoft specific add-ons, modules, data etc.

Arc oidplus(30) is an exception: It is an automatically managed arc and does not only contain ViaThinkSoft specific objects.

The space between each of these OIDs is reserved for special purposes of the neighbor(s) at the left. For example, the arc 11 is reserved as special addition to the arc 10.

For OIDs withhin this arc, please follow the Guidelines.

OIDs in freeoid(9000)

Arcs delegated to private persons or small workgroups. Companies should use other services like the Private Enterprise Numbers of IANA, which are also free.

The delegation is automatically done using the OIDplus plugin "Register a free OID" (it was formerly a separate web-service located at www.viathinksoft.de/freeoid) without human intervention. The web service ensures that each validated email address only get one OID. The OIDs are numbered sequentially. Using a password, the OID owner can change details of the OID. The Registry is public and contains name and email address of all registered OIDs.

All assignments are permanent, and the authority is completely transferred to the new owner. In case the OID is not used anymore, the owner can simply stop using it. The superior RA (ViaThinkSoft) does not need to be informed about this. The OID will still be publicly listed in the registry.

ViaThinkSoft will only revoke an OID if the request is obviously spam or otherwise false information. In this case, the identifier will still be assigned, but will be listed as revoked OID. The requester loses control over the revoked OID and is not allowed using it.

Please click here for additional rules for these free OIDs.

OIDs in example(9999)

This OID can be used by anyone, without any permission, for the purpose of documenting examples of object identifiers (in the same way as "example.com" is defined in IETF RFC 2606 as an example for web sites).

The arc example(9999) is obsolete and was replaced by 2.999.

For OIDs withhin this arc, you do NOT have to follow specific Guidelines.

Guidelines for defining your OIDs

These Guidelines are applying to all ViaThinkSoft OIDs, except for members(1) and freeoid(9000) (which are your "personal" OIDs).

1. Please define all your OIDs in OIDplus.
2. Use exactly one alphanumeric (ASN.1) identifier.
   A secondary identifier should be used only for backwards compatibility or special cases.
3. Use either zero or one Unicode labels (IRI).
4. Alphanumeric (ASN.1) identifiers and Unicode labels (IRI) shall be in English language and shall be consistent in their naming.
5. Please use unique alphanumeric (ASN.1) identifiers, e.g. use v1(1) and v2(2) instead of v(1) and v(2).
6. The description and additional information shall be provided in English.
7. If you want to assign OIDs in sequential order, please begin with 1 and reserve arc 0 for special values/cases.
8. While you develop your OID tree, you can either use experimental OIDs in experimental(4) or use the "Hidden" flag in OIDplus to hide your allocations. As soon as you remove the "Hidden" flag, your OIDs will become "official" and will shortly be automatically published at oid-info.com.
9. Recommendation: If you reference an object, e.g. { ... thing(5) }, consider adding version numbers and use them as reference instead, e.g. { ... thing(5) version1(1) }. You can also add an appendix for "Work in Progress" (WIP) { ... thing(5) version1(1) wip(0) } as alternative to an experimental or hidden OID.

Retired and revoked OIDs

Retired OIDs stay being listed, except for dynamically generated OIDplus Information Objects inside oidplus(30), and should not be re-allocated.

OIDs can be completely deleted (and therefore later re-allocated) if they are unused, or if all references have been deleted.

Unused or mis-defined OIDs should be deleted/moved if possible.