Registrations in the urn:mace:eenet.ee namespace

MACE has delegated the operation of urn:mace:eenet.ee namespace to EENet.

  • Internet2/MACE Uniform Resource Name (URN) registry
  • RFC 3613 defines the "urn:mace" namespace and describes the procedures and policies governing its use.


What is URN?

Links between web pages are called Uniform Resource Locators (URL) as they point to the location of a specific resource. URN on the other hand is Uniform Resource Name. That means it gives a uniform name to a resource, but does not tell anything about where or how to access it. The URN of a resource remains globally unique and persistent, regardless of the availability or location of the resource.

Read more in the Wikipedia article on URNs.

What can I do with an URN?

URNs by themselves to not impose any usage or protocol as to what to do with them. They are intended to merely give a name to a resource, such as:

  • a version of a terms and conditions document
  • permissions in a complicated software solution, such as SAML 2 federation (e.g TAAT)
  • books or articles, referred to by their IBAN or other number
  • a dataset in research data warehouse
  • magnet links to torrent files (referred to by SHA1 of the torrent file)
  • etc

    • How are URNs made golbally unique?

    URNs are namespaced i.e. the name of an URN is composed of parts, each representing part of a namespace. All URN namespaces are registered with the IANA. Each registered namespace in turn can be sub-divided into namespaces and delegated further.

    One such name space is urn:mace which is registered by Middleware Architecture Committee for Education (MACE) and used to create URNs for many services and solutions for education, such as SAML entitlements, etc.
    MACE has also delegted urn:mace:eenet.ee to be handled by EENet.

    URNs administered by EENet

    Below is a table of all URNs that EENet has created below the urn:mace.eenet.ee namespace.

    Namespace Purpose Date registered Registry link
    urn:mace:eenet.ee:tera Used for eduPersonEntitlement attribute values for Terena Certificate Service Registration Authority service. 03.03.2014 http://www.eenet.ee
    urn:mace:eenet.ee:tera:personal-user Entitlement to apply for TERA Confusa personal certificate 03.03.2014 http://www.eenet.ee
    urn:mace:eenet.ee:tera:personal-admin Entitlement to administrate Confusa personal certificate service 03.03.2014 http://www.eenet.ee
    urn:mace:eenet.ee:tera:escience-user Entitlement to apply for TERA Confusa eScience certificate 03.03.2014 http://www.eenet.ee
    urn:mace:eenet.ee:tera:escience-admin Entitlement to administer Confusa eScience certificate service 03.03.2014 http://www.eenet.ee
    urn:mace:eenet.ee:staff Used for EENet internal purposes. 01.04.2014 http://www.eenet.ee
    urn:mace:eenet.ee:staff:accounting Entitled to access accounting systems and software 01.04.2014 http://www.eenet.ee
    urn:mace:eenet.ee:TAAT:int Entity ID for Interfederation (eduGAIN) Metadata feed for TAAT Identity Federation 05.12.2014 http://www.eenet.ee