Subject: stability of iana.org URLs

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2013 09:47:50 -0400

I just followed http://www.iana.org/assignments/enterprise-numbers.html
From RFC3315 (DHCPv6)'s reference section.  Ten years later, the URL
doesn't work.

I know that things were reworked when we went to XML based storage, but
I thought that the old URLs would at least have a 301 error on them.

I discovered that dropping the .html gets me the right data at:
  http://www.iana.org/assignments/enterprise-numbers

but I had to walk through the list of protocol numbers to find this.
I feel relatively confident that I found the right list, but other people
looking for registries that are more confusing (ikev1 vs ikev2, etc) might
not wind up at the right place.

--
Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>, Sandelman Software Works

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From: Barry Leiba <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2013 10:06:06 -0400

>   http://www.iana.org/assignments/enterprise-numbers

Yes: that's the form that IANA would like you to use.  They changed
their registries from HTML to XML, and the URLs changed.  Supposed
they should decide to turn them all into JSON (aieeeeeeeee!)... the
URLs would change again.  But the suffix-less version will always
work.

When I've done AD reviews of documents that cite IANA URLs, I've given
the authors that feedback, and suggested the change to the suffix-less
URLs.  I also intend to suggest to IANA (thanks to a document author,
and I've since forgotten who it was; sorry) that they post permalinks
in all the registries, so people will know which URL they ought to
use, and not have to guess.

Barry, Applications AD

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From: Peter Saint-Andre <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2013 16:11:14 +0200

On 7/31/13 4:06 PM, Barry Leiba wrote:
> their registries from HTML to XML, and the URLs changed.

That's true, but cool URIs don't change:

http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI.html

IMHO it'd be easy enough to put general redirects in place.

Peter

-- 
Peter Saint-Andre
https://stpeter.im/

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From: Barry Leiba <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2013 10:13:30 -0400

> IMHO it'd be easy enough to put general redirects in place.

They have: they are keyed off the suffix-less URIs.  That's why they
want us to use those.

Barry

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2013 08:49:44 -0700 (PDT)

> IMHO it'd be easy enough to put general redirects in place.

+1. mod_rewrite is nobody's friend, but it can be tamed and put to good use.

				Ned