1. Etisalat/I&eS/SOM/Amani PAGE 1 Amani M. Bin Sewaif Senior Engineer Services Operations & Maintenance Etisalat – Intenet & e Solution amani@ies.etisalat.ae November 1, 2004

2. Etisalat/I&eS/SOM/Amani PAGE 2  Introduction  Overview  GCC project for Arabic Domain Names  How IDNS works?  Client Requirements  IDN conversion Tool  A list of supported IDNS applications  Conclusion Outline

3. Etisalat/I&eS/SOM/Amani PAGE 3 Introduction Domain names are used widely by Internet users to find resources on the Internet. They contain alphanumeric strings separated by dots, e.g., www.etisalat.ae. That are not required by the network software, but are used for human convenience.www.etisalat.ae 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.

4. Etisalat/I&eS/SOM/Amani PAGE 4 IDNS Overview 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.

5. Etisalat/I&eS/SOM/Amani PAGE 5 IDNS Overview 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

6. Etisalat/I&eS/SOM/Amani PAGE 6 The GCC Project for Arabic Domain Names 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.

7. Etisalat/I&eS/SOM/Amani PAGE 7 GCC Participation

8. Etisalat/I&eS/SOM/Amani PAGE 8 The Arabic root and ccTLD

9. Etisalat/I&eS/SOM/Amani PAGE 9 Caching DNS SERVER UAEnic DNS SERVER Ar-root.nic.ae DNS SERVER Etisalat college DNS SERVER 1 23 45 7 6 8 موقع.كلية-اتصالات-للهندسة.امارات. NS Records o ccTLD xn--mgbaam7a8h 194.170.195.16 NS Records of etisalat college xn--mgbaam7a8h 194.170.195.16 A records of موقع xn--mgbaam7a8h 194.170.195.16 Referrals to ccTLD serversReferrals to 2 nd level DNS servers Completed zone with addresses How IDN Works?

10. Etisalat/I&eS/SOM/Amani PAGE 10 How to resolve Arabic Domain Name?

11. Etisalat/I&eS/SOM/Amani PAGE 11 Client Requirements 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)

12. Etisalat/I&eS/SOM/Amani PAGE 12 IDNS/ADNS Converting Tool Tool to convert Unicode to ASCII format The ACE prefix (ASCII compatible encoding) for IDNA is "xn--" http://xn--mgbaakc7dvf.xn--mgbaam7a8h http://اتصالات.امارات

13. Etisalat/I&eS/SOM/Amani PAGE 13 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 3.2 + GNU IDN Library)  Epiphany 1.2.2 and higher  Galeon 1.3.14 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. Etisalat/I&eS/SOM/Amani PAGE 14 A list of support IDNS application EMAIL  Microsoft Outlook 2000, 2002 (XP), 2003; Outlook Express 5.0 and  higher + - Verisign i-Nav PlugIn + Foxmail 5.0 and higher  VisNetic MailServer 7.2.4 build 0 and higher  Merak Mail Server 7.4.0 and higher  PHlyMail FTP  SmartFTP 1.0 Build 980  Core FTP Version 1.3a  SecureFTP 4.0.2004 Release and higher  FTP Voyager 11.0 and higher

15. Etisalat/I&eS/SOM/Amani PAGE 15 Browsing اتصالات.امارت

16. Etisalat/I&eS/SOM/Amani PAGE 16 Browsing a domain with xn-- prefix

17. Etisalat/I&eS/SOM/Amani PAGE 17  http://www.arabic-domains.org.sa/main-en.php http://www.arabic-domains.org.sa/main-en.php  http://arabic-domains.org.sa/ar/how2use.php http://arabic-domains.org.sa/ar/how2use.php  http://idn.isc.org/ http://idn.isc.org/  http://دليل.امارات http://دليل.امارات  IDNS RFCs: IDNS RFCs:  http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3490.txt http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3490.txt  http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3491.txt http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3491.txt  http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3492.txt http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3492.txt More information..

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