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Monitoring System API Specification

Overview

Monitoring System API (MoSAPI) is a REST API that allows gTLD registries, participating country code top-level domains (ccTLDs) and ICANN accredited registrars to retrieve information collected by the Service Level Agreement Monitoring (SLAM) system. The SLAM system is a tool managed by ICANN to measure in near real-time the Service Level Agreements (SLA) defined in Specification 10 of the Base gTLD Registry Agreement and in the future, Section 2 of the Registration Data Directory Services (RDDS) Specification of the 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement.

The MoSAPI includes the ability to:

  • Monitor the state of a top-level domain (TLD).
  • Monitor the alarm status of a service.
  • Monitor the availability of a service.
  • Monitor the state of a particular incident.
  • Monitor the false positive flag of an incident.
  • Query a list of incidents for a service.
  • Query the list of measurements for an incident.
  • Query the details of a particular measurement.
  • Retrieve information from Domain Metrica, once available.
  • Query network troubleshooting information from the probe network.

The MoSAPI also provides information on alerts and the health of the services to generic top-level (gTLD) registries, participating ccTLDs, and ICANN accredited registrars that can be used for troubleshooting purposes.

Results for ccTLDs are logged in SLAM and ccTLD operators may opt in to MoSAPI, however no alerts or actions are triggered when a failure is detected on those services.

Get access to the MoSAPI

gTLDs

You can access the MoSAPI from the IP addresses that you have allowed for accessing the Registry Reporting Interface (RRI) with your RRI credentials if using HTTP Basic Authentication. The RRI credentials and the IP addresses allowed for accessing the RRI are managed through the Naming Services portal. If you have not already done so, you will need to provide both the IPv6 and IPv4 prefixes that you will use to connect to the MoSAPI for allowing access, via the TLDs tab on the Naming Services portal.

gTLD Registries may also enable Transport Layer Security (TLS) Client Authentication (more information on this authentication method below) to access MoSAPI by providing two pieces of information in the NSP portal:

  1. Domain name for TLS Client access (e.g., rsp1.nic.example)
  2. List of authorization roles

More information about the Naming Services portal may be found in the "Naming Services portal" section in the Registry Resources page.

ccTLDs

To request access to the MoSAPI, please contact ICANN Global Support identifying the ccTLD for which you are requesting access. ICANN will contact the administrative and technical contacts of the ccTLD as listed in the IANA Root Database to validate the information and provide access.

ICANN Accredited Registrars

To receive production credentials for the MoSAPI, please have the Registrar Primary Contact send a request to registrar@icann.org and specify at least one of the supported authentication methods along with the corresponding information as noted below:

  • TLS Client Authentication:
    The use of TLS Client Authentication is strongly encouraged as it removes the need to maintain an IP access list.
    • The domain name for TLS client access.
  • HTTP Basic Authentication:
    Registrars that wish to use HTTP Basic Authentication must provide the following information. Please note that the MoSAPI will reject connections from any IP address not included in the access list:
    • The IPv6 and IPv4 prefixes used to connect to the production RRI system. These prefixes will be added to the IP access list to allow access to the production environment.
    • Bcrypt(10) version 2a hash of the password that will be used for authentication. The password used to generate this hash must be between 16 and 64 random characters. To generate a Bcrypt hash, public libraries and online tools are available online that may be used to generate the hash of the password to be used.
    • Supported characters are letters (a-z, A-Z), digits (0-9), and the following special characters:
      space, ! # $ % & ( ) * + - . / : < > = ? @ [ ] ^ _ | { }

TLS Client Authentication

This method uses TLS with client authentication, meaning that the MoSAPI will authenticate the client using X.509 certificates in HTTPS. TLS Authentication (TLSA) DNS resource records (see RFC 6698) are used to provide a mechanism to link the client certificate to be used.

More technical information about TLS Client Authentication and an example of how to generate the required Resource Records and certificates for activating TLS Client Authentication may be found here: https://www.icann.org/rri.

MoSAPI OT&E Environment

ICANN currently hosts an Operational Test and Evaluation (OT&E) environment of MoSAPI exclusively for end-user testing by ICANN's contracted parties (OT&E access to ICANN-accredited registrars will be enabled in the future). This environment can be used to gain familiarity with the available interfaces, as well as to test system integration with MoSAPI.

You can access the MoSAPI OT&E from the IP addresses that you have allowed for accessing the Registry Reporting Interface (RRI) OT&E with your RRI OT&E credentials if using HTTP Basic Authentication.

The MoSAPI OT&E may also be accessed using TLS Client Authentication data by contacting the ICANN Global Support.

The MoSAPI OT&E provides the following functionality:

The URL of the MoSAPI OT&E is: https://mosapi-ote.icann.org

Specification

Current version:

Previous versions:

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Domain Name System
Internationalized Domain Name ,IDN,"IDNs are domain names that include characters used in the local representation of languages that are not written with the twenty-six letters of the basic Latin alphabet ""a-z"". An IDN can contain Latin letters with diacritical marks, as required by many European languages, or may consist of characters from non-Latin scripts such as Arabic or Chinese. Many languages also use other types of digits than the European ""0-9"". The basic Latin alphabet together with the European-Arabic digits are, for the purpose of domain names, termed ""ASCII characters"" (ASCII = American Standard Code for Information Interchange). These are also included in the broader range of ""Unicode characters"" that provides the basis for IDNs. The ""hostname rule"" requires that all domain names of the type under consideration here are stored in the DNS using only the ASCII characters listed above, with the one further addition of the hyphen ""-"". The Unicode form of an IDN therefore requires special encoding before it is entered into the DNS. The following terminology is used when distinguishing between these forms: A domain name consists of a series of ""labels"" (separated by ""dots""). The ASCII form of an IDN label is termed an ""A-label"". All operations defined in the DNS protocol use A-labels exclusively. The Unicode form, which a user expects to be displayed, is termed a ""U-label"". The difference may be illustrated with the Hindi word for ""test"" — परीका — appearing here as a U-label would (in the Devanagari script). A special form of ""ASCII compatible encoding"" (abbreviated ACE) is applied to this to produce the corresponding A-label: xn--11b5bs1di. A domain name that only includes ASCII letters, digits, and hyphens is termed an ""LDH label"". Although the definitions of A-labels and LDH-labels overlap, a name consisting exclusively of LDH labels, such as""icann.org"" is not an IDN."