Re: [idn] IAB letter on IDNs and VeriSign

["Soobok Lee" <lsb@postel.co.kr>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John C Klensin" <klensin@jck.com>
 > 
> Soobok,
> 
> With the understanding that I'm not on the IAB any more and did 
> not participate in the writing of that statement...
> 
> First, designing anything for the Internet on the assumption 
> that it will be deployed and then "phased out after 2 years" 
> just doesn't recognize reality.  We have had almost zero success 
> in "phasing things out" when they are deployed only on servers. 

Your viewpoint is right in general, but may not in this special case in which
the centralized deployment of  VGRS solution is based on gTLD servers.
gTLD server will remain under centralized control of ICANN forever.
If ICANN order "turn off the 8bit-query support " after 2 years, 
VGRS should follow. From then on, end users should install 
the plugins manually. I can't see any big problem here...


> The problem is much worse when implementations require replacing 
> software on client machines and the protocols are still vaguely 
> operational.  Our last success in making a major and rapid 
> phase-out solution was the "phase out" of NCP. That was 20 years 
> ago and with the benefit of credible threats to remove any host 
> from the network which did not comply.

The disputed problematic part of VGRS solutions is not the end user
plugins, but rather the use of central gTLD servers as plugin installation triggers. 
ICANN can control that so that such _special_ usage  end sometime.


> 
> Second, there is no reason to predict that ICANN will do 
> anything that is sensible, measured, and that shows a good 
> understanding of either the technical or the policy issues of 
> IDN deployment -- rather than just the short-term politics or 
> agreement that internationalization is good.  Certainly the 
> resolutions adopted in Shanghai should not be considered good 
> news in this respect.  Those resolutions basically say "there is 
> a problem, we should proceed carefully, and the lifetime of the 
> so-far-ineffectual committee should be extended to work on it 
> without changes that will make it more effective".

Yes.

> 
> > IESG/IAB are
> > willing to justify that IDNA by supplemental Registrations
> > guidelines ? If IDNA can be justified in such a way, why not
> > VGRS solutions ?   :-) Still I hope IAB can express such
> > consistent conservatism  also to IDNA/nameprep itself, which is
> > the source of all these hassles...
> 
> At the risk of reopening a debate that was never satisfactorily 
> resolved, if the issue is merely one of permitting non-ASCII 
> characters to be used in identifiers, with those identifiers 
> being placed in DNS labels, IDNA is fine.  It may even be more 
> complex and protective than is needed for that purpose (just as 
> the LDH rules were more than is needed for strict identifier use 
> in ASCII). To my knowledge, neither the IAB nor the IESG have 
> taken a formal position on whether registration guidelines are 
> either necessary or sufficient to resolve any presumed problems 
> with IDNA

I hope to see their knowledgeful and thorough comments soon.
 
  
> If, by contrast, someone is expecting IDNA to solve 
> the most general of user-interface searching and navigation 
> problems, that expectation is completely unrealistic. 

I agree. directory/searching should be layered above DNS.  but
such layer is not the mandatory one in IDNA nor ever mentioned
even though it is recognized as necessary one. There were many ideas
proposed around this issue, and i know there was even yours.
 
>  I think 
> just about everyone knows that is the case at this stage, if 
> only because it is clear that the DNS is inadequate to solve 
> that problem for names that are restricted to ASCII.  Some 
> marketing organizations might like to pretend otherwise, but 
> that doesn't make success in use of the DNS as a general-purpose 
> search environment any more likely.

I feel that I have no more energy  to revisit this issue or resist the inertia.
Anyway , Don't we have proposed standards ?   :-)  
 
Soobok Lee