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IDN Standards and Implications
Kenny Huang
Board, PIR
[email protected]
Overview
• IDN Standard Update
• What needs to be done
• The future of IDNs
IDN Standards Update
• IETF and Protocol Standardization
• ICANN and Policy Guidelines
• Relevant Linguistic Issues
• TLD Deployments
IETF and Protocol Standardization
• IDN RFCs
– 3490 IDNA – Framework for conversion of IDN
into Punycode at the application end for DNS
resolution
– 3491 Nameprep – Stringprep Profile for use in
IDNs (case mapping, normalization and
“sanitization” to reduce ambiguity of names)
– 3492 Punycode – An ACE (ASCII Compatible
Encoding) for use in IDNs
– 3454 Stringprep
• IESG Statement
– IDNA does not solve all of the problems of IDN
ICANN and Policy Guidelines
• Strict compliance with IDN Standards (RFC 3490,
3491 and 3492)
• “Inclusion-based" approach for identifying
permissible code points for registration
• Associate each registered IDN with one language or
set of languages, and employ language-specific
registration and administration rules that are
documented and publicly available
• Work collaboratively with relevant and interested
stakeholders to develop language-specific
registration policies
– Should, initially, limit any given domain label to the
characters associated with one language or set of
languages only
– Should provide informational resources and services in all
languages for which they offer internationalized domain
name registrations
Relevant Linguistic Issues
• ICANN requires registries to establish
Language-specific registration policies
– What authorities are “authoritative” for which languages?
– What if there are more than one possible “authority”, e.g.
French used in different parts of the world?
• Character Equivalence Mapping
– Should there be Character Equivalence Mapping for
visually identical (or close to identical) characters (e.g.
Greek capital Alpha and English capital “A”)
– Other Languages that may have “traditional-simplified”
equivalence issues
– How far down the “semantic” path should we get?
TLD Deployments
• Verisign .COM and .NET
• .ORG legacy IDN registrations
• .CN, .TW Chinese Implementations
• .KR, .JP Implementations
• .NU, .BZ, .TV Implementations
• European Implementations
(.DE, .AT, .CH, .PL)
• Afilias .INFO Implementation
• Other planning and scheduled
implementations
Where are we heading?
• Wider spread deployment
• Wider spread doubts
• Internet navigation becoming more
user-friendly for the rest of the world
• Internet navigation becoming more
confusing for everyone
• Highly dependent on the deployment
path and user expectation
management
Who needs to be doing what?
• Registry Responsibilities
– DNS Resolution, Domain Registration & WHOIS
– Interim Resolution Strategies, IDN over EPP, IDN at WHOIS
• Application Developers
– IDN Resolution
– Speed of deployment
• ICANN & IETF
– Policies and Standards
– Consistent & promote wide adoption
• Linguists
– Linguistic Relevance
– Start conservative with the goal to become as light-weight
as possible
• Service Providers
– Accept IDN traffic (Do Not Block)
– Manage and maintain IDN information
IDN and Web Browsing
• What is Happening Today:
– IDNA-enabled Browsers
• Mozilla 1.4+ & Opera 7.1+
– IDNA plug-ins
– Assistive Resolution Platforms
• Web Redirection
– Synthesized-IDN A RR
– E.g. Verisign (.COM / .NET), .CN, .TW, .JP, .KR
• 8-bit DNS Resolution
– Synthesized CNAME RR (DNAME based concept) to
Punycode Domain
– E.g. Afilias (.INFO), .BZ
IDN and Web Browsing
• Areas of consideration for Application
Providers
– Address Bar, IDN Links, Bookmarks
– History, Status Bar, Etc.
– Integration with other applications (e.g.
copy-and-paste)
• IRI – Internationalized Resource
Identifiers
IDN and Email
• IDNA MUA plugins (Mail User Agents,
e.g. Outlook, Eudora, etc.)
• Assistive Resolution Platforms
– Mail Relay
• Synthesized MX record
– 8-bit DNS Resolution
• Same as in Web Browsing
IDN and Email
• Areas remaining to be standardized
– IDN over SMTP
– IDN in MIME Headers
– Internationalized user name (Local part of
an email address, i.e. the name before the
“@” sign)
• Discussions have somewhat started at
IETF
IDN and Domain Registry Systems
• IDN Registration Storefront
• Database management for IDN
– Store as Punycode vs Store as UTF
• IDN over EPP
– Object extension approach
• Add service extension to Domain Object
• Suitable for use without character equivalence
preparations
• Simple for deployment
• Announcement of Language-Tag
IDN and Digital Certificates
• Not much work yet
• Probably dependant on browser or
other Digital Certificates viewers
• Use of Punycode could be problematic
– Perception is reality
– User will be confused if displayed name is
not easily recognizable with intended
name
Other Applications
• Network tools
– NSLookup, etc
– Network monitoring tools
• Customer and other Databases
– Storing and using IDNs (automated emails,
automated web updates etc.)
– Search databases (click through links)
• Mailing Lists
• Etc.
The Future of IDNs
• Is there demand for IDNs?
• Who would use IDNs?
• Chicken and Egg issue for Registries
and Application Providers
• Does IDN solve all of the userfriendliness of Internet navigation
issue?
What the DNS does and does not
• Domain Names are identifiers
• Unique and unambiguous to the machine
(not necessarily to humans)
– E.g. Digit 0 and Character O
• Domain Names are NOT “navigation tool”
• Domain Names are best only for “direct
navigation” NOT involving guessing
• Domain Names function best as an “address”
– i.e. you don’t try to send mail to an address
without knowing the exact address and expect it
to arrive at the right person
Place for IDNs
•
•
•
•
Local or regional use
Intra-company use
Personal use
International preference may be lowest
common denominator: i.e. everyone should
be able to type in a particular name
• Local preference includes culture and
heritage
• Personal use makes most sense to use your
native tongue
Summary
•
•
•
•
IDN Standards (RFCs) are published
IESG IDN Statement is published
ICANN IDN Guidelines are drafted
Everything Else remains to be worked out
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–
–
–
IRIs and Email Addresses
IDN over EPP
IDN in WHOIS
IDN in Digital Certificates
• IDN aware Applications
– Browsers and Email Agents
– Database Management Systems
– Any application that uses or stores domain
names