Re: [idn] IAB letter on IDNs and VeriSign

[Steve Dyer <steve@uk.com>]

At 18:37 28/01/2003 +0900, Soobok Lee wrote:
> 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...
Surely 8-bit support is a current characteristic of DNS? - certainly BIND 
supports the transit of most ASCII 8-bit characters and this is good 
functionality.
It is the way that VeriSign has altered the functionality of DNS handling 
8-bit data in a normal fashion to using codes over 127 for their own 
corporate purposes that is the issue here.

We should not alter the functionality of standard DNS and neither should we 
accept the need for a client-side plugin to make an Internet protocol function.
We should also not accept a system which introduces duplication into the 
DNS - a DNS request should supply a single unequivocal answer.

Regards

Steve Dyer