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Moving Towards Internationalized Domain Names

Moving Towards Internationalized Domain Names. Paul Hoffman Internet Mail Consortium September 7, 2000. What is covered today. Quick DNS overview Update on the IDN Working Group IDN proposals Transition strategies Next steps (See conference notes for more details). DNS overview.

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Moving Towards Internationalized Domain Names

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  1. Moving Towards Internationalized Domain Names Paul Hoffman Internet Mail Consortium September 7, 2000

  2. What is covered today • Quick DNS overview • Update on the IDN Working Group • IDN proposals • Transition strategies • Next steps • (See conference notes for more details)

  3. DNS overview • Today’s host names are a-z, 1-9, and ‘-’ only, and case is ignored in comparisons • Some other ASCII characters have been further restricted (mostly those used in URLs) • There is a strong desire to allow all common naming characters from all scripts in host names

  4. Problems with going to IDN • Although the DNS specification does not restrict host names to ASCII, many implementations do, and that will cause problems if there is a shift to UTF-8 in the protocol • Some protocols that use the DNS (mail and digital certificates, for example), cannot use 8-bit names

  5. IDN Working Group status • New WG web site: <http://www.i-d-n.net> • Many proposals before the WG • messages within the DNS, and queries/responses applications  DNS • canonicalization and limitations on characters in internationalized names • No consensus yet, and lots of discussions still active

  6. Proposals under active discussion • Main protocols in discussion appear to be IDNE (uses EDNS0 to mark binary requests in the DNS) and IDNRA (involves no changes to the DNS) • “nameprep” is the main proposal for limitations and processing

  7. Transition strategies • Will the changes work if only some of the parts of the DNS are updated? • Must prevent any damage to the the current DNS, and also must look sensible to novice Internet users • This could be biggest stumbling block for any proposal

  8. Next steps for the IDN WG • The working group must focus on a single on-the-wire protocol • That protocol must be bashed heavily by critics and supporters to be sure that it will really do what it is supposed to • Also must start defining what types of characters are wanted and not wanted in host names

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