Re: [Fwd: Request for Advice on VGRS IDN Announcement]

[RJ Atkinson <rja@extremenetworks.com>]

On Tuesday, Jan 7, 2003, at 01:26 America/Montreal, Patrik Fältström 
wrote:
> My view is that IAB/IESG should tell ICANN the 6 points above MUST be 
> fixed by Verisign before IAB/IESG feel the implementation is according 
> to the IDNA standard and acceptable use of the DNS and other protocols 
> defined by the IETF process.
>
> I have no problem being the contact person which Verisign can pass 
> ideas/suggestions/etc to.
	We should also note that the issue arises in part because a very widely
deployed web browser (hint: Internet Exploder) emits invalid DNS 
requests
that use UTF8 -- and that any such {browser, DNS resolver} 
implementation
is badly broken and needs to get patched immediatley by the implementer 
(Microsoft)
so that the {browser, DNS resolver} fully complies with all DNS 
standards.

	I'm not defending what Verisign has done, but we need to be 
even-handed in
any IAB Considerations document.  We need to protect all aspects of DNS 
integrity.
Part of being even-handed is noting that Verisign was driven to do this 
by the
widely deployed, if broken, Microsoft code.

	There might also be an issue with the MS implementation of the DNS 
server
in their NT/Win2K software (not sure).  We should try to ascertain 
whether
that also has this broken UTF8 behaviour -- and express concern over 
that
issue in the same note.

	(And I'm not necessarily suggesting that we name names in the IAB note,
but we do need to describe the observed broken behaviours.  And I find 
it odd
that we feel compelled to gripe about Verisign's brokenness, but have 
never felt
compelled previously to complain about Microsoft's widespread DNS 
brokenness.
It would have been more consistent to comment on the MS DNS brokenness
[which drove Verisign] a long while back, for example.)

Ran