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

[RJ Atkinson <rja@extremenetworks.com>]

On Tuesday, Jan 7, 2003, at 11:26 America/Montreal, Rob Austein wrote:
>    The WG consensus was that Microsoft should foad.
	My copy of the OED says that "foad" means "to beguile with fair words".
Given that, I can't lex the above quoted sentence.

> So while it would be a good thing for Microsoft to ship the latest and
> greatest IDN junk ASAP, I don't think it's fair to fault Microsoft for
> having shipped UTF-8 DNS in the past.
	Maybe some folks here are on a witch-hunt against Verisign,
but my assumption was that an IAB Considerations document (which
is the topic of at least MY comments) ought not be naming *any*
particular firm as evil.

	Rather, my understanding (again, maybe I missed the "we are on a
witch hunt" notice) was that the IAB Considerations document would 
express
concern about current issues relating to DNS operations.  In that 
context,
a DNS application that deploys a "just send UTF8" posture is in fact a
significant issue for the deployed DNS and needs to be fixed.  For 
openers,
DNS requests containing UTF8 characters (i.e. those not present in 
US-ASCII)
operationally look rather a lot like a DDoS attack -- though that's 
clearly
not the intent of the authors of such DNS applications.  So it seems 
very
appropriate to have a section that discusses the presence of IDN 
standards,
the non-standard deployment of "just send UTF8", and the need to get all
software to migrate away from any pre-standard behaviours and comply
with all DNS standards.

	And I'll bet there are some other significant DNS operational issues
that also ought to be noted in such an IAB Considerations document.  
I'll
leave it to others to identify those items in more detail.

Ran
rja@extremenetworks.com