RFC 4122 UUID Specification Overview | Generated by AI
RFC 4122 is a technical specification published by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in July 2005. It defines a Uniform Resource Name (URN) namespace for Universally Unique Identifiers (UUIDs), which are also known as Globally Unique Identifiers (GUIDs).
A UUID is a 128-bit number used to uniquely identify information in computer systems without requiring a central authority to manage the identifiers. The standard outlines five versions of UUIDs (e.g., version 1 based on timestamp and MAC address, version 4 based on random bits), their generation methods, encoding formats (like the common hexadecimal string with hyphens: xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx), and guidelines for their use in protocols and applications. This ensures interoperability across different systems and networks.
The specification has been widely adopted in software development for tasks like database keys, session IDs, and distributed systems.
RFC 4122 - A Universally Unique IDentifier (UUID) URN Namespace
Universally unique identifier - Wikipedia