A human-friendly name in the XRI system for persistent naming on the Internet. I-names are registered to people, businesses, communities, as well as to any data resource. The registrar is an "i-broker," which enables the registrant to manage the i-name data record (the XRDS file).
People are =, Companies are @
A personal i-name starts with an equals sign, such as =john.doe, and a company i-name starts with an at sign, such as @mycompany. People and company i-names are high-level XRI names.
Communities and Data
A community can be created by subdividing an @ i-name with a star (*) preceding each individual, such as @mygroup*john.doe. Data names are created by subdividing a company i-name with a plus sign (+) for each data element, such as @mycompany+productA.
People (=) and company (@) i-names are managed by the i-broker; however, the * and + i-names at a lower level are maintained and managed in local servers, similar to the way lower-level DNS names are stored on a company's own DNS servers, not the top level root servers on the Internet. Individuals with = i-names can also subdivide their name into additional users and data in the same manner. See XRI, XRDS and i-broker.
Symbol User I-Name Example
= Person =john.doe
@ Company @mycompany
@ and * Community @mygroup*pat
@mygroup*susan
@mygroup*joe
@ and + Data @mycompany+productA
@mycompany+productB
@mycompany+productC
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