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 10646UNICODE 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 PerspectiveWHOS WHO
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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
ICANNs 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 RD 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
MINCs 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 JPNICs 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 (???)
• Normalization
• Simplified Chinese Characters vs. traditional
  Chinese Characters

25
Technology PerspectiveIETF IDN Movement Status
Update
26
IDNA Concept
IDNA Transformation
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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

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IDNA Interface Components
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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

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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

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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
• Doesnt 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
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Search Model Example One
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Search Model Example Two
StringPrep
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THANK YOU