RE: [idn] Re: An idn protocol for consideration in making the req uirements

[Karlsson Kent - keka <keka@im.se>]

> From: ned.freed@innosoft.com [mailto:ned.freed@innosoft.com]
...
> > And still no-one has even made it plausible that some DNS
> > servers will 'fall over and die' if presented with 8-bit
> > data.  And if some DNS servers do, then they are so
> > vulnarable to attack that they should be upgraded or
> > decommissioned ASAP anyway.
> 
> AFAIK nobody ever made such a claim,

The reason I brought that up was due to what Andrew and Harald wrote:

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand [mailto:Harald@Alvestrand.no]
...
> At 10:04 27.01.00 -0800, Andrew Draper wrote:
...
> >However, who knows how many resolvers are out there built into printers
and
> >the like.  I expect that some of these will be quite fragile.  So I would
> >suggest adding "Should not send non-ASCII names to resolvers which don't
> >support IDNs" to the requirements.
> 
> There are 2 classes of failure:
> 
> - Fall-over-and-die failures; those are arguments for the SHOULD NOT
>    (or rather a MUST NOT) requirement.
> - Doesn't-look-nice failures; those I would place far less weight on.
> 
> The current (NU, IDN) tests should give us SOME idea.....if anyone's 
> measuring....


----------back to Ned's text-----------------------



> so this is a complete  strawman argument.
> The issue isn't the DNS, it is applications that use the DNS.  And nobody
> claimed such applications will die either (although it is known that some
very
> old ones will). What is claimed is that applications will trash domain
names in
> UTF-8. And please don't try and tell me otherwise; I've seen 
> it happen many many times.

Reencoding non-ASCII into ASCII is a trashing in itself.  The
experience with QP and BASE64 for text is frightening enough
not to accept anything in that vein again.  And for e-mail
those things were really temporary measures anyway, given 
ESMPT and 8bit.  QP and BASE64 for 'plain' text are still used
(even emitted by the e-mail system I use; which I cannot
control in this respect).

I'd much rather have some temporary problems with UTF-8 than
have permanent problems with something that reencodes non-ASCII
into ASCII.

In a transition phase (or permanently, if desired) I see no
real problem in having two or more names for the same domain,
one of which had to be in ASCII.  People could then say "...if this
domain/e-mail address does not work, try this one instead...".

After some time we would then have a 'clean' solution, rather
than be permanently troubled with UTF-5, CIDNUC, or whatever
like that.

		Kind regards
		/kent k