MULTILINGUAL DOMAIN NAMES

1
MULTILINGUAL DOMAIN NAMES
JOINT ITU/WIPO SYMPOSIUM
December 6, 2001

• Hirofumi Hotta
• hotta_at_jprs.jp

http//???????????.jp
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ASCII characters in the Internet
1,2

• The Internet as the birth
• Born in the United States
• Research and academic users
• Limited resources in computers and communication
  devices
• Only ASCII codes are used for the core of the
  Internet

Only ASCII characters have been used even by
people using non-ASCII characters in social life
3
Ex) non-English characters in e-mail

• Step1
• Phonetic mapping in e-mail texts
• Step2
• Native language characters in e-mail texts
• Step3
• Native language characters in Subject fields
• Step4 ?
• Native language characters in To and From
  field
• Names such as company names and personal names in
  the social relevant context should be presented
  in their native language

4
What is a domain name ?

• Human readable identifier of an entity within the
  Internet Ex) www.itu.int
• Substitute of an IP address

www.itu.int
domain name
top level domain label
second level domain label
third level domain label
each label characters


5
Domain name structure

jp
com
org
uk
au
int
..
..
co
or
go
ad
itu
sun
yahoo
wipo
nic
WWW
jprs
WWW
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Characters in domain names
Computer Engineers
LDH
(letters-digits-hyphen)
Wider users
???

• Consumers
• ASCII character set users
• Natively ex) English
• In transliterated form ex) Malay
• Non-ASCII character set users
• Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Tamil, .

7
Demands on multilingual domain names

• Rapid growth of the Internet
• More non-English speakers are becoming Internet
  users
• People using non-ASCII characters
• Undesirable unification in LDH world
• ??, ??, ??, ..are all hirofumis in ASCII space
• Apostrophe, accents, umlauts, .. cannot be used
  in ASCII space

Demand on multilingual domain names
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History (technology)
3

• Late 1990s
• Multilingual domain names were developed at the
  National University of Singapore
• July 1998
• Asia Pacific Networking Group
• iDNS Working group development of the
  experimental implementation of an
  Internationalized multilingual multiscript Domain
  Names Service
• Why shouldnt domain names be internationalized
  too, now that the Internet has grown to reach
  almost every corner of the world using different
  languages?
• iDomain Working Group creation of an iDNS
  testbed in Asia Pacific countries
• China, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore,
  Taiwan, Thailand, .

9
History (technology) - continued

• 1998-1999
• Prototypes demonstrated in international
  conferences
• BoFs held in international conferences
• APRICOT
• INET
• Singapore, China, Hong Kong, Korea, Japan,
  expressed interests in implementation
• Nov. 1999
• BoF in IETF
• IETF Mailing list discussion
• Jan. 2000 -
• IDN (Internationalized Domain Name) Working Group
  in IETF

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History (deployment)

• End of 1999
• Several companies began commercialization of the
  multilingual domain name technology
• Several testbeds emerged
• July 2000 -
• MINC (Multilingual Domain Names Consortium)
• promotion of the multilingualization of Internet
  names, including Internet domain names and
  keywords, the internationalization of Internet
  names standards and protocols, technical
  coordination, and liaison with other
  international bodies
• Country/regional organizations
• AINC (Arabic Internet Names Consortium)
• CDNC (Chinese Domain Name Consortium )
• INFITT (International Forum for IT in Tamil )
• JDNA (Japanese Domain Names Association )

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History (policy)

• March 2001
• Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) Working Group
  in ICANN Board
• Fact finding survey concerning technical, policy,
  and service aspects
• Survey report published in Sept. 2001
• Market demand shown
• List of issues elaborated
• GAC (Governmental Advisory Committee) of ICANN
• communiqué expressing GACs support for
  multilingual domain names
• With regard to international domain names, the
  GAC confirms the importance and interests of this
  development to the benefit of Internet users
  worldwide
• Sept. 2001
• IDN Committee
• Will recommend solutions of non-technical issues

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How domain names are resolved
4
root server
managed by IANA
IP address of .com name server IP address of .int
name server IP address of .jp name server

.int name server
managed by IANA on behalf of .int
IP address of itu.int name server IP address of
wipo.int name server
Internet
managed by ITU
itu.int name server
IP address of www.itu.int IP address of
intra.itu.int
A server having www.itu.int
http port
156.106.192.32
intend to browse http//www.itu.int
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Where multilingual domain names are recognized
Internet
application
DNS
server application
client application
user
PC
ASCII domain names
currently
in the future
ASCII domain names
multilingual domain names
option 1
multilingual domain names
option 2
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Key technical questions

• How should non-ASCII codes be represented ?
• Where should non-ASCII codes be recognized ?
• in the client application / in the DNS server
• What is the technical mechanism that maps
  multilingual domain names to current DNS
  technology ?

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Basic technical requirements

• Preservation of compatibility with current domain
  names
• Preservation of uniqueness of domain name space
• The Internet must not be divided into islands

Required by IAB (Internet Architecture Board)
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Character codes of multilingual domain names

• Current proprietary (local) standard
• in PCs
• in PDAs
• in Internet-enabled phones
• Best current solution may be
• UNICODE
• Specification of code sets of many languages
• Additional issues
• traditional Chinese characters / simplified
  Chinese characters
• Are they same characters in domain names ?
• Is this a local code issue or universal protocol
  issue ?

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Client-side vs. Server-side solutions

• Client-side solution
• Translation between multilingual script and
  ASCII-compatible representation is performed in
  the user application
• Domain names are processed as ASCII domain names
  all over the Internet
• Server-side solution
• Domain names are sent over the Internet in local
  encoding
• Applications and services communicate with each
  other using non-ASCII domain names all the way

user
application
DNS
ASCII domain names
multilingual domain names
client-side solution
multilingual domain names
server-side solution
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Client-side solution Server-side solution

• IETF is moving towards client-side solution
• Stability
• DNS is a huge distributed database
• DNS is working on a delicate balance
• Substantial change of DNS is dangerous
• Deployment speed
• Changing all the servers takes long time
• Consistency
• Partial deployment of server-side solution may
  lead to separation of the Internet

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How multilingual string is converted to ASCII
ex)

ABC?????.JP ABC??????.JP ABC??????.JP
original string
NAMEPREP
unification of the strings considered to be the
same
ex)
normalized string
ABC?????.JP
ACE
conversion to an ASCII string
ex)
ASCII string
Internet (based on ASCII)
BQ--GD7UD72C75B2X46RZP6A.JP
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NAMEPREP and ACE

• NAMEPREP (Preparation of Internationalized Host
  Names)
• Multilingual string representations which should
  be regarded as the same string are converted into
  one representation
• Case fold
• Normalize
• Prohibit
• ACE (ASCII Compatible Encoding)
• Multilingual representation is converted into an
  appropriate ASCII domain name
• Ex) ACE algorithm
• RACE
• BQ--3BS6KZZMRKPDBSJQ4EYKIMHTKQGU7CY
• AMC-ACE-Z
• ZQ--ECKWD4C7CU47R2WFQW7A0ECL32K

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Issues in using ACE

• Subspace is used by multilingual domain names
• Issues
• Reservation of the subspace
• Length limitation is severer
• Domain label
• Domain name

ACE
ACE-ed Multilingual Domain Names
Multilingual Domain Names
decode
ASCII Domain Names
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IDNA
(Internationalizing Host Names in Applications)
user
local

UI
application
To/From Unicode
to/from Unicode
NAMEPREP
NAMEPREP
internal representation
end system
To/From ACE
to/from ACE
API
resolver
international
DNS servers
application servers
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Impact on the DNS structure
5

• Alternate root

multilingualized
Name Server
Name Server
Name Server
Hierarchy overseen by ICANN
authoritative root
multilingual domain name space
multilingual domain name space
TLDs not authorized by ICANN
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Impact on the DNS structure (continued)

• Inclusive root (variation of alternate root)

multilingualized
Name Server
Hierarchy overseen by ICANN
multilingual domain name space
unauthorized TLDs can be seen together with
ICANNs
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Impact on the DNS structure (continued)

• Pseudo-root (zero level domain)

??.??
Name Server
??.??.jp
append .jp to ??.??
Hierarchy overseen by ICANN
jp
??
multilingual domain name space
??
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Defining a multilingual top level domain

• Current implementation of multilingual domain
  names
• Second level domain or under
• Allowed by current DNS architecture and
  technology
• Top level domain
• Alternate root
• Inclusive root
• Pseudo-root
• Above are only to satisfy commercial drive or
  users demands on early deployment of
  multilingual domain names
• It is important for ICANN to define a
  multilingual top level domain creation policy

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Issues in various TLDs
6

• non-ASCII-string.ASCII-ccTLD
• non-ASCII-string.ASCII-gTLD
• Organizations already being authorized are
  responsible for the domain name space
• any-string.non-ASCII-ccTLD
• One organization from the relevant country is
  named to be responsible for the domain name space
• If a country has more than 1 official language,
• What is the language for non-ASCII-ccTLD, or
• How many non-ASCII-ccTLDs are given to the
  country
• any-string.non-ASCII-gTLD
• No one can tell whether top level domain .?? is
  Chinese or Japanese
• Difficulty in choosing a responsible organization
• who in what country

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Other political issues

• What are the languages that constitute
  multilingual domain names
• Some languages have 2 or more kinds of scripts
• Traditional Chinese/simplified Chinese
• Who is the language authority for multilingual
  domain names
• Should rules be the same even under different
  TLDs?
• A single domain name registry should not be the
  ultimate authority of for the rules
• Is such rule definition an international issue?
• Language rules are known to only people using the
  language
• To what extent does the solution need
  international standard or local coordination?
• Each language stakeholders should coordinate
  among themselves

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Implementations
7

• VGRS (VeriSign Global Registry Services)
• JPNIC/JPRS (Japan Network Information Center /
  Japan Registry Service)
• i-DNS.net
• CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center)
• Walid
• Neteka
• NativeNames

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Future Issues
8
growth of the number of multilingual domain names
and their users
synergy
deployment of name servers with
multilingual domain names
applications with multilingual domain
name facilities
policy and coordination of registration and
management rules
technology standardization and development