1. Internationalized Domain Name Evolution
Kenny Huang
TWNIC

2. Demands Where and How

3. Human factors
People would like to name themselves and their objects in their own language
ISO 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 Perspective WHO’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
Marina del Rey
To host Internationalized Domain Names Workshop
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 (Yokohama)
Local charset or ACE
2nd : Aug (Beijing)
Common mDNS
3rd : Nov (Taipei)
Global/Localized components
4th : Feb. 28 – Mar (Kuala Lumpur)
IETF Standardization & Localization
5th : June (Shanghai)
6th : Oct (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 Perspective IETF IDN Movement & Status Update

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

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
Reordering
IDNA
AMC-ACE-Z

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

37. Search Model Example Two
DNS
StringPrep
Application
Yellowpage

38. THANK YOU