D2.3: Models

 

Universal private address with XRI and I-Names

I-names are universal private addresses intended to provide persistent addressing. An I-name integrates a person’s different electronic addresses, such as email, instant messaging, SMS/MMS etc. An I-name assigned to a person is, similarly to a domain name, supposed to be relatively long-lived and does not change even when the person’s contact data changes. Additionally, it protects the person from undesired communication attempts, such as spam, by operating on a permission-based communication infrastructure.  

I-names are based on the XRI (Extensible Resource Identifier) and XDI (XRI Data Interchange) specifications under development from OASIS. XRIs are a kind of Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) providing a standard syntax and resolution protocol for abstract identifiers, i.e. identifiers that are independent of a specific location, domain, application, or protocol. I-names are human-friendly identifiers (for a person, they may simply have the form “=GivenName.FamilyName”) that are usually combined with I-numbers, i.e. persistent machine-friendly identifiers assigned to resources (persons in this case). 

An I-name may be used to contact the respective person via a specific channel, such as email, only if the person has given permission to do so. Otherwise, the I-name may only be used to request this permission. These requests can automatically be filtered by an I-broker using a personal contact page via which the person may specify rules for contacting.  

References

I-Names Explained http://www.xdi.org/i-names-explained.html

 

 

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