Re: [idn] Moving Towards UTF8 vs ASCII(ACE) Forever

["Edmon Chung" <edmon@neteka.com>]

From: "Meritt James" <meritt_james@bah.com>
> Ah, but was there an implementable ANSWER?  THAT is the question!
>

Here is a simple architecture/roadmap possibility:

1. IDNA user-end plugin
    - this plugin does all the heavy lifting to encode and decode ACE and
display it properly for the user
    - servers does not upgrade.  Even administration side is kept as is,
allowing leakage for administrators
    - IDNA plugins must also be able to decode IDN(UTF8)/EDNS [This I will
call UDNA for this discussion]

2. UDNA DNS Server upgrade
    - DNS servers will now accept both ACE and IDN(UTF8)/EDNS requests and
provide consistent responses
    - IDNA plugins continue to send in ACE but will start to see UDNA
responses

3. UDNA for clients & everywhere
    - IDNA plugins begin to obsolete, new versions of application software
comes with UDNA built in.
    - In case DNS servers are not upgraded yet, clients will continue to use
the IDNA plugin which will work fine with the new UDNA application.
    - Other applications/servers upgrade to UDNA to accept UTF8 domains,
administrators might continue to see ACE leakage if the client still uses
IDNA to send requests, but UDNA requests will be viewable and manageable in
UTF8

4. UDNA
    - Slowly but certainly, we will move towards full UTF8 because
administrators will likely want to deal with UTF8 than ACE, especially for
say those admins in China who are dealing with IDNs frequently.

You should be able to find holes in it, but it is whether the general
concept is workable that is important.  If so, THEN, we can work on refining
the concept and putting it into a draft.  And one of the key things is that
UDNA MUST be included in an IDNA plugin to start with for the entire system
to be able to move out of ACE and into UTF8 completely eventually.  That is
why we cannot and should not leave it out for now.

Thoughts everyone?

Edmon


----- Original Message -----
> Dave Crocker wrote:
> >
> > At 09:52 PM 3/20/2002 -0500, Edmon Chung wrote:
> > >An underlying question we must ask ourselves from all the discussions
that
> > >have sprung up every now and then is:
> >
> > and as luck would have it, the working group has asked itself that
question
> > many times, so we need not pursue it again.
> >
> > d/
> >
> > ----------
> > Dave Crocker <mailto:dave@tribalwise.com>
> > TribalWise, Inc. <http://www.tribalwise.com>
> > tel +1.408.246.8253; fax +1.408.850.1850
>
> --
> James W. Meritt CISSP, CISA
> Booz | Allen | Hamilton
> phone: (410) 684-6566
>