scope:

People often refer to things in the real world by a common name or phrase, e.g., a trade name, company name, or a book title. These names are sometimes easier for people to remember and type than URLs. Furthermore, because of the limited syntax of URLs, companies and individuals are finding that the ones that might be most reasonable for their resources are being used elsewhere and so are unavailable. For the purposes of this document, a "common name" is a word or a phrase, without imposed syntactic structure, that may be associated with a resource.

This effort is about the creation of a protocol for client applications to communicate with common name resolution services, as exemplified in both the browser enhancement and search site paradigms. Although the protocol's primary function is resolution, it is also intended to address issues of internationalization and localization. Name resolution services are not generic search services and thus do not need to provide complex Boolean query, relevance ranking or similar capabilities. The protocol is a simple, minimal interoperable core. Mechanisms for extension are provided, so that additional capabilities can be added.