Persistent Identifiers (PID) are the foundation referencing digital assets in scientific publications, books, and digital repositories. In its realization, PIDs contain metadata and resolving targets in form of URLs that point to data sets located on the network. In contrast to PIDs, the target URLs are typically changing over time; thus, PIDs need continuous maintenance - an effort that is increasing tremendously with the advancement of e-Science and the advent of the Internet-of-Things (IoT). Nowadays, billions of sensors and data sets are subject of PID assignment. This paper presents a new approach of embedding location independent targets into PIDs that allows the creation of maintenance-free PIDs using content-centric network technology and overlay networks. For proving the validity of the presented approach, the Handle PID System is used in conjunction with Magnet Link access information encoding, state-of-the-art decentralized data distribution with BitTorrent, and Named Data Networking (NDN) as location-independent data access technology for networks. Contrasting existing approaches, no green-field implementation of PID or major modifications of the Handle System is required to enable location-independent data dissemination with maintenance-free PIDs.
Several projects propose an information-centric approach to the network of the future. Such an approach makes efficient content distribution possible by making information retrieval host-independent and integrating into the network storage for caching information. Requests for particular content can, thus, be satisfied by any host or server holding a copy. The current security model based on host authentication is not applicable in this context. Basic security functionality must instead be attached directly to the data and its naming scheme. A naming scheme to name content and other objects that enables verification of data integrity as well as owner authentication and identification is here presented. The naming scheme is designed for flexibility and extensibility, e.g., to integrate other security properties like access control. At the same time, the naming scheme offers persistent IDs even though the content, content owner and or owner's organizational structure, or location change. The requirements for the naming scheme and an analysis showing how the proposed scheme fulfills them are presented. Experience with prototyping the naming scheme is also discussed. The naming scheme builds the foundation for a secure information-centric network infrastructure that can also solve some of the main security problems of today's Internet.