Overview#
Draft-ietf-pkix-generalname-00 is an "old" Internet Draft describing "A String Representation of General Name"The PKIX working group has created the GeneralName RFC 2459 to support more name types than just the distinguished name specified by OSI.
GeneralName is encoded in ASN.1. When a GeneralName is communicated not using a ASN.1 encoded protocol (e.g., in a configuration file), there is a need to have a string representation of GeneralName.
Draft-ietf-pkix-generalname-00 specifies a string format for representing names, which is designed to give a clean representation of commonly used names, whilst being able to represent any GeneralName. This specification also recognizes that GeneralName needs to be communicated to humans, in which case the encoding has to be user friendly for display purposes, for e.g. on a business card or in an email message.
The list of valid name types and the corresponding name values with both application and display encodings are given below:
| GeneralName | Name-type | Name-value | Application | Display | See Also |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RFC 822 | "mail" | addr-spec | RFC 822 | RFC 822 | rfc822Name |
| Directory | "directory" | name | DN1 | DN2 | directoryName |
| RegisteredId | "registeredID" | OID | DN1 | DN1 | registeredID |
| DNSName | "dns" | hostname | URI | URI | dNSName |
| URI | "uri" | absoluteURI | URI | IURI | uniformResourceIdentifier |
| X400Address | "X.400" | O/R | [O/R] | [O/R] | x400Address |
| OtherName | "other" | other-value | <specified below> | otherName | |
| EDIPartyName | "edi" | edi-value | <specified below> | EDIPartyName | |
| IPAddress | "ip" | IPv4address IPv6address | IPv6 | IPv6 | IPAddress |
