Re: [idn] An experiment with UTF-8 domain names

[Patrik Fältström <paf@cisco.com>]

At 19.49 +0000 01-01-05, owner-idn@ops.ietf.org wrote:
>Am I right in thinking that UTF-8 style IDNs are used then Boris and
>Ivan can't communicate unless Ivan can persuade his ISP to upgrade his
>sendmail, but an ACE would only need Ivan to upgrade his mail client ?

Correct.

>In fact if Boris starts the exchange and although it would look odd,
>wouldn't Ivan be able to just hit `Reply' on his existing email client ?

Even this is true. It is even the case that Boris can give his 
ACE-version of his real email address to people in a form as "if you 
can not enter cyrillic characters in my email address, please enter 
this instead".

I.e. I could register one day maybe:

   fältström.com

...but could also on my buissness card have (if the ACE ends up being RACE):

   bq--abtoi3duon2hf5tn .com

Yes, it looks ugly, it explicitly is leakage which we all hate, but, 
it  makes it possible for people with non-IDN software to access the 
domain. Of course, I can in parallell have a domain which is 
"faltstrom.com" or whatever, but I might think that my customers if I 
help them that way never update their software. I.e. I _WANT_ people 
to be able to use "fältström.com" probably, so I would only help them 
to some degree, and that might be to give them the ace encoding in 
paralel with the real name.

    paf