Subject: [OPS-AREA] FW: WG Review: Internationalized Domain Name (idn)

From: "Romascanu, Dan (Dan)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2008 13:55:57 +0100

Please send me or directly to the IESG list any comments or concerns. 

Thanks and Regards,

Dan

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of
The IESG
Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2008 8:00 PM
To: [email-masked]
Subject: WG Review: Internationalized Domain Name (idn) 

A new IETF working group has been proposed in the Applications Area.
The IESG has not made any determination as yet.  The following draft
charter was submitted, and is provided for informational purposes only.
Please send your comments to the IESG mailing list ([email-masked]) by
March 4, 2008.

Internationalized Domain Name (idn)
=============================
Last modified: 2008-02-18 

Current Status: Proposed Working Group

Chair(s):

TBD

Applications Area Directors:

Lisa Dusseault ([email-masked]) Chris Newman
([email-masked])

Applications Area Advisor:

Lisa Dusseault ([email-masked])

Mailing List:

General Discussion: [email-masked] To Subscribe:
http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/idna-update
Archive: http://www.alvestrand.no/pipermail/idna-update/

Description:

The original Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) WG set the requirements
for international characters in domain names in RFC 3454, RFC3490,
RFC3491 and RFC3492 in 2002. These documents were tied to Unicode
version 3.2 and an update to the current version (5.x) is required to
accommodate additional scripts.
In addition, experience has shown a number of real or perceived defects
or inadequacies with the protocol. Some of them are described in an IAB
review (RFC4690), which also provides a good introduction to the subject
matter.

IDNA is currently tied to an obsolete version of Unicode. This WG is
chartered to untie IDNA from specific versions of Unicode using
algorithms that define validity based on Unicode properties. It is
recognized that some explicit exceptions may be necessary in any case,
but attempts would be made to minimize these exceptions.

Additional goals:

- Separate requirements for valid IDNs at registration time, vs. at
resolution time
- Revise bi-directional algorithms to produce a deterministic answer
whether a label is allowed or not
- Determine whether bi-directional algorithm should allow additional
mnemonics labels
- Permit effective use of some scripts that were inadvertently excluded
by the original protocols.

The constraints of the original IDN WG still apply, namely to avoid
disturbing the current use and operation of the domain name system, and
for the DNS to continue to allow any system to resolve any domain name.
The basic approach of the original IDN work will be maintained --
substantially new protocols or mechanisms are not in scope. In
particular, IDNs continue to use the "xn--" prefix and the same
ASCII-compatible encoding, and the bidirectional algorithm follows the
same basic design.

The WG will work to ensure practical stability of the validity
algorithms for IDNs (whether based on character properties or
inclusion/exclusion lists).

The work is currently organized into four deliverables, all Standards
Track. The WG will verify that it has consensus to adopt the proposed
documents as a starting point. The Overview document with explanation
and rationale is intended for Standards Track status because it has
definitions and other normative text required by the other documents.
The protocol specification explains how to map non-ASCII characters into
ASCII DNS labels. It relies normatively on two other documents that are
separate for readability: the bidirectional algorithm specification and
the character validity tables. The validity of characters in IDNs is
almost exclusively based on Unicode properties but is organized as
tables and categories for readability.

Goals and milestones:

Mar 08: WG Last Call for Overview/Rationale document Apr 08: Revised
Overview/Rationale document Apr 08: WG Last Call for Protocol, Bidi and
Tables documents May 08: Revised Protocol, Bidi and Tables documents May
08: Review Overview document again if needed Jul 08: Request for
publication for all documents

Documents:

http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-klensin-idnabis-issues
http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-klensin-idnabis-protocol
http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-faltstrom-idnabis-tables
http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-alvestrand-idna-bidi

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