Name Types in GSS-API

Besides QOPs and security mechanisms, OIDs are also used to indicate name types, which indicate the format for an associated name. For example, the function gss_import_name(), which converts the name of a principal from a string to a gss_name_t type, takes as one argument the format of the string to be converted. If the name type is, for example, GSS_C_NT_HOSTBASED_SERVICE, then the function knows that the name being input is of the form service@host. If the name type is GSS_C_NT_EXPORT_NAME, then the function expects a GSS-API exported name. Applications can find out which name types are available for a given mechanism with the gss_inquire_names_for_mech() function. A list of name types used by GSS-API is provided in Name Types.