Re: [idn] Debunking the ACE myth

[David Hopwood <david.hopwood@zetnet.co.uk>]

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Paul Hoffman / IMC wrote:
> At 11:13 PM +0100 7/19/01, David Hopwood wrote:
> >If, for example, a proposal required upgrading of the authoritative
> >servers *for zones that include IDNs* (but not necessarily any other
> >servers or proxies), I don't see any reason why that couldn't be done
> >quickly. Such zones have sufficient incentive to upgrade, if necessary.
> 
> That's not what most of the proposals at hand require. They require
> that any name server that might do IDN queries be upgraded.

Well, UDNS does. In general it depends on why the servers are being
upgraded. To support labels longer than 63 octets (or names longer than
255 octets), yes, it's necessary to negotiate use of a new DNS version,
which requires updates to all servers in the query path. AFAICS it should
not be necessary to require updates to all servers in the path for any
other reason, though (for example, it is not necessary in order to change
the algorithm by which names as encoded on the wire are canonicalised for
matching against names that come from zone files).

So, I think pretty much any reasonable design could be tweaked to have
the property that names that fit the octet limits in their wire-encoded
form, are resolvable with at most changes to authoritative servers for
zones with IDNs. What, if anything, am I missing?

- -- 
David Hopwood <david.hopwood@zetnet.co.uk>

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