Object Identifiers are arbitrary length hierarchical identifiers. The individual components are numbers, and they define paths from the root of an ISO-managed identifier space. You will sometimes see a string name used instead of (or in addition to) the numerical id. These are synonyms for the numerical IDs, but are not widely used since most sites do not know all the requisite strings, while all sites can parse the numeric forms.
So for example, JavaSoft has the sole authority to assign the meaning to identifiers below the 1.3.6.1.4.1.42.2.17 node in the hierarchy, and other organizations can easily acquire the ability to assign such unique identifiers. @author David Brownell @author Amit Kapoor @author Hemma Prafullchandra
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