1 ecompany/amani Amani M. Bin Sewaif Senior Engineer Services Operations & Maintenance Etisalat – Intenet & e Solution November 22, 2004

2 Outline  Introduction  Overview  GCC project for Arabic Domain Names  How IDNS works?  Client Requirements  IDN conversion Tool  A list of supported IDNS applications  Conclusion

3 ecompany/amani  Domain names are used widely by Internet users to find resources on the Internet. They contain alphanumeric strings separated by dots, e.g. It is used for human convenience.  Domain names are used instead of the numerical addresses that are known as Internet protocol (IP) addresses, which are mainly used by machines to route data packets on the Internet. Name resolution is carried out by the Internet domain name system (DNS). It further contains a mapping or conversion between each name and one or more IP addresses.  The DNS is a distributed database and organize all registered names in a tree structure. Introduction

4 ecompany/amani  IDN abbreviation stands for Internationalized Domain Name. It defines a domain name which contains specific characters for particular language.  Example of IDNS: ADNS (Arabic Domain Names)  Since the Internet begin, it supported only 7-bit ASCII code (English characters), and the Domain name System (DNS) supports alphabets, numbers and hyphen of the ASCII code.  There is a need to support multilingual characters in domain names in order to make the Internet globally accessible. IDNS Overview

5 ecompany/amani IDNA works by allowing applications to use certain ASCII name labels (beginning with a special prefix) to represent non-ASCII name labels. Lower-layer protocols need not be aware of this; therefore IDNA does not depend on changes to any infrastructure. In particular, IDNA does not depend on any changes to DNS servers, resolvers, or protocol elements, because the ASCII name service provided by the existing DNS is entirely sufficient for IDNA. ‘rfc3490 ’ IDNS Overview

6 ecompany/amani Mission: To implement a test bed for Arabic Domain names in the GCC countries. This will allow all GCC countries to early experience the use of Arabic domain names, identify our needs, locate possible problems, and develop some tools. Objectives: 1. To gain experience and knowledge of the Arabic Domain names and share it with Arab countries. 2. Test the implantations of Arabic Domain names. 3. Build the local awareness about Arabic Domain names. 4. Establish joint work with other entities (i.e., ISPs, universities, 5. Possibly develop some tools related to Arabic domain names and DNS. The GCC Project for Arabic Domain Name

7 ecompany/amani GCC Participation

8 ecompany/amani Slave for the Arabic GCC ccTLDs. Master for the Arabic GCC ccTLDs. السعودية امارات قطر AR-ROOT.NIC.NET.SA GCC Arabic Root Server AR-ROOT.NIC.AE GCC Arabic Root Server “ SA Arabic ccTLD AE Arabic ccTLDQA Arabic ccTLD The Arabic root and ccTLD

9 ecompany/amani Caching DNS SERVER UAEnic DNS SERVER Ar-root.nic.ae DNS SERVER Etisalat college DNS SERVER موقع.كلية-اتصالات-للهندسة.امارات. NS Records o ccTLD xn--mgbaam7a8h NS Records of etisalat college xn--mgbaam7a8h A records of موقع xn--mgbaam7a8h Referrals to ccTLD serversReferrals to 2 nd level DNS servers Completed zone with addresses How ADNS Works?

10 ecompany/amani How to resolve Arabic Domain Name?

11 ecompany/amani  These are a list of requirements for a client in order to resolve/reach Arabic test domain names:  These problems occurred because some main Internet entities and software developer have not fully supported internationalized domain names (IDN) (such as ICANN and Microsoft). Therefore a client should match some requirements in order to resolve/reach Arabic domain names.  Personal Computer and Internet connectivity.  The Internet Service Provider (ISP) name server (resolver) should support Arabic domain names (by participating in this project) or the client can setup his own name server (resolver).  Any browser that support Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) Client Requirements

12 ecompany/amani Tool to convert Unicode to ASCII format The ACE prefix (ASCII compatible encoding) for IDNA is "xn--" IDNS/ADNS Converting Tool

13 ecompany/amani A list of support IDNS application Browsers  Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 and higher + Verisign i-Nav TM PlugIn  Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 and higher + ISC´s IDN-OSS  Netscape 7.1 and higher  Mozilla 1.4 and higher  Mozilla Firefox 0.6 and higher (former Mozilla Firebird)  Opera 7.20 and higher  Konqueror (from KDE GNU IDN Library)  Epiphany and higher  Galeon and higher  Safari 1.2 and higher  Mozilla Camino 0.7 and higher To enable IDN in an IE browser, it is necessary to install special plug- in supporting IDNs.

14 ecompany/amani A list of support IDNS application  Microsoft Outlook 2000, 2002 (XP), 2003; Outlook Express 5.0 and  higher + - Verisign i-Nav PlugIn + Foxmail 5.0 and higher  VisNetic MailServer build 0 and higher  Merak Mail Server and higher  PHlyMail FTP  SmartFTP 1.0 Build 980  Core FTP Version 1.3a  SecureFTP Release and higher  FTP Voyager 11.0 and higher

15 ecompany/amani Browsing اتصالات.امارت

16 ecompany/amani Browsing a domain with “xn- -” prefix

17 ecompany/amani      IDNS RFCs: ohttp:// ohttp:// ohttp:// More information..

18 ecompany/amani