Subject: [eap] Issue 33: Encoding of Identity Response

From: [email-masked] (Bernard Aboba)
Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2002 05:57:39 -0700 (PDT)

Issue 33: Encoding of Identity Response
Submitter: Mark Wodrich
Submitter email address: [email-masked]
Date first submitted: August 12, 2002
Reference:
Document: RFC2284bis-05
Comment type: T
Priority: S
Section: 5.2
Rationale/Explanation of issue:

Displayable messages are to be encoded in UTF-8. The Identity Request
MAY contain a displayable message, and if so, that is UTF-8 encoded.
But what about an Identity Response? Is that UTF-8 encoded? Does
RFC 2486 allow this? Please clarify in the text.

Proposed Resolution:

[BA] If the Identity Response contains an NAI, then the Response
MUST satisfy the NAI grammar described in RFC 2486. This appears to
enable any character to be utilized within the username, so UTF-8
is reasonable there. However, the encoding of the NAI realm is
subject to the same restrictions as Internationalized Domain Names,
which do *not* use UTF-8 encoding.

So I don't think that the Identity Response has the same requirements
as a Displayable Message (though it may indeed be displayed). Here is
the proposed text:

"If the Identity Response contains a Network Access Identifier (NAI),
then the NAI MUST conform to the grammar described in [RFC2486]. For
example, the realm field of the NAI may contain any characters legal
for inclusion within fully qualified domain names, and thus is
internationalized as though it were an Internationalized Domain Name
(IDN)."