RE: [idn] Alternative Solutions

["Jonathan Rosenne" <rosenne@qsm.co.il>]

Maybe, if the spec says to go to the server for the conversion from Unicode to
ACE, and someone short circuits this and saves a lookup, the spec would not be
in conflict with the purported patent.

Jony

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-idn@ops.ietf.org [mailto:owner-idn@ops.ietf.org]On Behalf
> Of Adam M. Costello
> Sent: Friday, May 04, 2001 11:12 PM
> To: idn@ops.ietf.org
> Subject: Re: [idn] Alternative Solutions
>
>
> I think I finally understand Edmon's proposal.
>
> In the current IDNA scheme, the only form of the domain name stored
> in DNS is the ACE form.  Applications algorithmically convert Unicode
> domain names to and from ACE.
>
> In Edmon's proposal, applications still algorithmically convert ACE to
> Unicode, but not Unicode to ACE.  For Unicode to ACE, they do a DNS
> lookup, which requires that DNS store duplicate information under both
> the ACE names and the Unicode names (or appear to do so).
>
> Presumably this is intended to get around the patent.  I don't know if
> it does.  In any case, it seems like such a shame to do a DNS lookup
> when a local computation would suffice, and get nothing in return for
> that extra cost.  If we're going to pay for a DNS lookup on one end, we
> might as well pay for DNS lookups at both ends, because then we can get
> something in return: meaningful (non-gibberish) LDH names.
>
> AMC
>
>