Re: [idn] Alternative Solutions

[John C Klensin <klensin@jck.com>]

--On Tuesday, 01 May, 2001 23:35 -0400 Keith Moore
<moore@cs.utk.edu> wrote:

>> Server-side ACE - ACE transformation takes place at server end
> 
> even if you set up another way to do queries for IDNs
> (whether this is a separate protocol or a mode bit or whatever)
> you still need ACE for client protocols that only support ASCII
> names.

Unless we go either into a new class (or some EDNS-required
mechanism) that prevents an "international" name from being seen,
and an "international" query from being made, except by IDN-aware
applications.  If unconverted client protocols, and unconverted
clients using converted protocols, cannot access
international-format names or have such names returned to them,
one doesn't _need_ ACE to protect them from damage.

There are, of course, still some advantages of using ACE
encodings rather than something else with such mechanisms, but
they could presumably be used without a tagging prefix, saving
some of the strange appearance of the things and four characters
of label length.

     john