EPP

Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP) is an XML based protocol used by the internet industry particularly the registrars and registries in managing domain names (register, renew, modify, delete, transfer) and other elements in a Shared Registry System environment. It is the standard protocol used by majority of gTLDs and ccTLDs. As described by RFC 3730, EPP can be used in a multiple layered protocol and operating environments with different transport and security requirements. MIME media type application/epp+xml identifies the content of EPP.

Service Elements Provided by EPP

EPP provides basic service elements which include:

• service discovery
• commands
• responses
• extension framework supporting the definition of managed objects and the relationship of protocol requests and responses to those objects

EPP Command Categories

A command is initiated by clients. A certain command is processed by a server so that the client who initiated it will receive a response. The three types of EPP commands include:

1. session management commands- establish and end persistent sessions with an EPP server
2. query commands-perform read-only object information retrieval operations
3. data transform commands-perform read-write object management operations

EPP Implementation

DotRegistrar and Key Systems, Afilias, NeuStar, and VeriSign tested and implemented EPP on their servers. Other registries also adopted the protocol including:

• .aero, .asia, .biz, .cat, .com, .coop, .info, .jobs, .mobi, .name, .net, .org, .pro, .travel

• .au, .eu, .us, .fr, .ag, .si, .at, .be, .br, .bz, .la, .cx, .gs, .tl, .ki, .ms, .mu, .nf, .ht, .na, .cz, .hn, .co.cz, .it, .lc, .lu, .me, .mn, .uk, .no, .nl, .nu, .pt, .sc, .se, .ch, .li, .vc, .cc, .tv, .cn, .tw, .im, .cl, .ac, .sh, .io, .tm, .in, .es (over HTTPS), .pl (over HTTPS),

• i.3.4.e164.arpa (infrastructure ENUM) in Austria)

Related RFCs

• RFC 3735- Guidelines for Extending the Extensible Provisioning Protocol
• RFC 3915- Domain Registry Grace Period Mapping for the Extensible Provisioning Protocol
• RFC 4114- E.164 Number Mapping for the Extensible Provisioning Protocol
• RFC 4310- Domain Name System (DNS) Security Extensions Mapping for the Extensible Provisioning Protocol
• RFC 5730- Extensible Provisioning Protocol
• RFC 5731- Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP) Domain Name Mapping
• RFC 5732- Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP) Host Mapping
• RFC 5733- Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP) Contact Mapping
• RFC 5734- Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP) Transport over TCP