Internationalized Domain Name Evolution

1. Internationalized Domain Name Evolution Kenny Huang TWNIC 2001.10.17

2. DemandsWhere and How

3. Human factors • People would like to name themselves and their objects in their own language • ISO 10646+UNICODE is a necessary answer, but not sufficient • DNS has some shortcomings as well

4. Deployment Issues • Objectives of Internationalizing Protocols • Deploying parallel name spaces • Deploying parallel communication spaces

5. Objectives of Internationalizing Protocols • Many protocols internationalized: • SMTP, HTML, etc • Domain Name Service foundational • and therefore has earthquake effects if changed without thinking clearly

6. Deploying parallel name spaces • Simple to do - • Deploy many DNS roots with different name spaces • Effect: • People using one cannot find people in another • Commerce diminished • Mail exchange impeded, etc

7. Correctness issues • Many servers running Bind • Often as old as version 4 • Incompatible upgrades cause other systems to fail • Software reliability is one of the big issues, and this is a key component

8. ASCII (ACE) or non ASCII IDN • The IDN solutions can be very extreme, there is no intermediate solution • ACE has short-term benefit but has long-term penalty • 8bit clean technique introduces system vulnerability ?

9. Policy PerspectiveWHO’S WHO

10. Who Own and Control the Internet? • Domain Names(gTLD, ccTLD) • IP Address • Protocol Parameter • Root Server • BIND

11. ICANN ICANN (Formally IANA) Govt. Advisory Committee DNS Root Server TLDs: gTLD/ccTLD ARIN,RIPE APNIC IETF/IAB

12. What ICANN does • To Coordinate the unique assignment of • Three values that are essential to the • Proper functioning of the Internet • Domain Names • IP addresses • Protocol port and parameter numbers

13. What ICANN does not do • Content Control • Network Security • Data Privacy Protection • Setting multilingual name standards • Multilingual Internet interoperability

14. ICANN’s Responses • 2000. 3 Cairo • 2000. 6 Yokohama • ASCII, Internet Language • 2000. 11Marina del Rey • To host Internationalized Domain Names Workshop • 2001. 3 Melbourne • To discuss Internationalized DN in the public forum

15. MINC • Coordination of R&D on multilingual names • Coordination on deployment of multilingual names • Coordination with the relevant organizations i.e. IETF, W3C, ICANN, ISOC, Unicode, IEEE, ISO and ITU • Coordination for standards development

16. Issues of Interoperability • Tower of Babel – Babelisation of Internet has taken place. • “Islands” of the Internet should be prevented i.e. which should not fragment the network with multiple non-interoperable standards • Asia Pacific Taskforce on internationalising Domain Names set up • Internet Engineering Task Force urgently set up IDN Working Group

17. Several Multilingual Domain Names Testbeds emergent • Industry driving this • NSI (Verisign) and partner companies setting up multilingual.com services testbed • JPNIC, KRNIC launching production level testbeds for japanese.jp and korean.kr • CNNIC, TWNIC, HKNIC, MONIC forms CDNC - in progress

18. MINC’s Role • MINC will coordinate the Interoperability Testing as a whole. • MINC will commission the Interoperability Testing Working Group to manage the Testing. • MINC will operate the testing using a self-financing cost-recovering model.

19. What is JET? • Joint Engineer Team for developing Open Multilingual Domain Name System for ICANN TLDs. • Core members are CNNIC, JPNIC, KRNIC and TWNIC. • ISC, IETF co-chair and VeriSign GRS are invited. • Business status & plan are exchanged for the better service introduction.

20. JET meetings & Discussions 1st : July 15 2000 (Yokohama) Local charset or ACE 2nd : Aug 28-30 2000 (Beijing) Common mDNS 3rd : Nov. 29-30 2000 (Taipei) Global/Localized components 4th : Feb. 28 – Mar 1 2001 (Kuala Lumpur) IETF Standardization & Localization 5th : June 25-26 2001 (Shanghai) 6th : Oct 18 2001 (Beijing) Last f2f meeting before IETF standardization

21. Open Source Code TWNIC/CNNIC mDNS with 8-bit clean BIND 8-bit clean Squid proxy/Apache web server JPNIC mDNkit To be fully compatible with IETF standards Core library for processing mDN Code conversion between local charset and ACEs Normalization Tools for code conversion mdnconv, dnsproxy, runmdn, mDN Wrapper BIND 8 & 9 Patches

22. JET Outcome Information exchange on the business Service menu & schedule (JPRS) System development Reserved words DRP Engineering Discussion IETF Contribution UNAME TSCONV JPCHAR HANGUELCHAR Software Release: JPNIC’s mDNkit Plan Localization

23. CDNC • Members : CNNIC, TWNIC, MONIC, HKNIC • Development • multilingual domain name system • system interoperability • Information Sharing • Multilingual domain name service activation and operation

24. CDNC Experience • Strong momentum from official registries • First organization introduce multiple root systems model (chain table) and multilingual ccTLDs, gTLDs (全漢字) • Normalization • Simplified Chinese Characters vs. traditional Chinese Characters

25. Technology PerspectiveIETF IDN Movement & Status Update

26. Communication Layer Input/Output DNS Protocol Application Protocol IDNA Concept IDNA Transformation

27. IDNA Overview • Changes of presentation layer of applications • No changes to application protocols • No changes to DNS protocol • No changes to any current DNS servers

28. IDNA Interface Components

29. Changes to applications for IDNA • Input of host names • Prepares name using stringprep • Applies an ACE • Sends encoded name to resolver (as well as application layer protocol) • Display of host names • Scans displayable text or protocol elements for ACEs • Displays them in local display format

30. STRINGPREP • Output of a single, unambiguous string • Let user enter anything that might look correct to them • Typical users should be able to follow logic of preparation

31. Overview of STRINGPREP • Mapping • Mapping characters to other characters • Normalization • Normalizing the characters • Prohibit • Excluding characters that are prohibited from in internationalized host names

32. Ripple Effects • Un-updated applications will display obscure ACE format • Non-IDN names that use the ACE prefix or suffix will either be considered illegal or will appear as nonsense characters • Doesn’t internationalize text records in the DNS zone files

33. Administrative Issues • Administrative interface for DNS servers must all check IDN names • Probably done with automated scripts converting from and to preferred native format • Will probably be important to check all names with stringprep, even after they are in the zone files

34. IETF IDN Update • AMC-ACE-Z as chosen ACE • nameprep/tsconv/hanguelchar/jpchar/stringprep should be consolidated into one architecture • the requirements draft will be moving forward for IETF Last Call • Go forward with IDNA.

35. IDNA Possible Structure Client Local Process Localization StringPrep Internationalization IDNA Reordering AMC-ACE-Z

36. DNS StringPrep TC/SC Engine Yellowpage Application Search Model Example One

37. DNS Yellowpage Application Search Model Example Two StringPrep

38. THANK YOU