Introduction

This document describes how to use the Handle System server version 5.3 and related tools.

The Handle System is not an end user system. By this we mean it is not like an off the shelf software application that will be used daily. It is considered an underlying infrastructure used to help identify digital resources whose location information might need to be updated from time to time. It is a public naming service that enables secure name resolution over the Internet.

The Handle System is made up of handle services, one of which is the Global service. All other services are referred to as local handle services. The Global service knows about all the local services. A service consists of one or more sites. Each site can have one or more servers. The simplest service configuration might consist of one site with only one handle server. This is recommended as a good place to start.

Handle servers should be installed by system administrators. It is very much like installing a web server. The server should be installed on a machine with an Internet presence. This machine should preferably be outside an organizational firewall. If that is not possible then ports 2641 and 8000 must be open to incoming and outgoing messages. This is because the Global service must be able to talk to your local server. Remember that the Global handle service contains the site information for all services within the Handle System. It knows where to direct name resolution requests. The Global service is very much like DNS root and is often referred to as the root service.