RealNames Proposes a New Internet Naming Standard

RealNames and Network Solutions, a major investor in RealNames, have documented their Internet Keyword technology and have published an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) draft for a new protocol called the Common Name Resolution Protocol (CNRP).

How It Works

CNRP works similarly to the Internet name resolution service called Domain Name System (DNS). DNS is a distributed database service that automatically locates a specific machine or Web site on the Internet by a “friendly” name—such as www.microsoft.com—so that users don’t need to deal with obscure numeric Internet addresses like 207.46.130.45. DNS does this by looking up the friendly name in a table that maps these names to their assigned numeric Internet addresses, and then returns the numeric address to the user’s application.

CNRP works by mapping common names—also referred to as Internet Keywords—to specific URLs. A company must register an Internet Keyword with a CNRP provider. At the moment, there is only one such provider, RealNames. The Internet Keyword and its associated URL are entered into the CNRP provider’s database. When a keyword—which may also be a phrase such as “Honda Accord”—is entered into the address bar of a browser, CNRP connects to the CNRP database and asks for the associated URL. The URL, which in the above case would be http://www.honda2000.com/models/accord_sedan/index.html, is returned to the browser and the user is automatically taken directly to the Honda Accord home page.