Subject: [iucg] contribution to ICANN on IDNs

From: Elisabeth Blanconil <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 11:09:16 +0100

Hi! Folks,
I posted this on Tina Dam's blog. No answer. Thank you to correct me if said
something wrong or if something is missing.
Hebe

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IRT. IDNs, actually the problem is far simpler than ICANN makes it. And this
where it becomes complex.

China supports its IDNccTLD for a long through stubs. Actually they are in
the root zone, but not in the ICANN root file. The problem is that IDNA was
documented in 2003 in continuation of i-DNs existing IDNs and related to
Unicode version 3-2. While Unicode had reached version 5. There was a need
to make IDNA independent from Unicode version, to correct some
imperfections, etc. This has been stabilized for the Internet by the
recently published IDNA2008 version.

It only describes the way the Internet DNS wants to receive IDNs to restore
them at the proper destination. This is neat and clean on the Internet side.
The problem is that ICANN has not understood yet that the work is not
completed: nothing has been specified for the user side, just a list of
still not approved suggestions.

The reason why is that IDNA2008 unleashes the Internet capacity to support
multiplicity, what is named the “presentation” layer and this way makes
common the use of classes. This is an enormous change for users (ICANN only
takes care of class “IN” domain names). At the same time, since there is no
more “stringprep” there is a lot more flexibility for character mapping
(preventing look alike characters to be confused, on a cultural basis). Yet,
that mapping is just “up in the air”. There is no documentation, not
configuration file and format, etc. in order to introduce some globally
understood/used procedure.

As a result you can have several IDNA enabled applications on your PC that
may resolve differently the _same_ IDN. IETF has no solution yet for that.
Because this is on the user side, not on the network side. But this is not
in the scope of anyone, because no one is in charge of something universal
to the user.

So, the solution is for the Internet Users themselves to specify their own
architecture. This is not complex. This works very simply, there is not a
single line of code to change: just to load and run named on your computer
and use your own copy of the root to make your computer non recursive and to
get build a copy of Bind that supports punycode.

Problem is that when you have that on board your PC you are not tied to
ICANN something anymore. You can decide to support any TLD which has a name
server. Choosing among millions of TLDs of your liking if people started
supporting them for free. In addition you can do that in other classes than
“IN” and this means no pollution, no interference with ICANN. You can even
run your own “.com” in an other of the 65.000 classes.

This is chaos. Actually, this is the unique virtual root and exactly what
ICANN has asked to experiment in its ICP-3 document, but never did. This is
why Fast Track with only a few selected IDNccTLDs is technically meaningless
and an incitation to all the others to start their own MYCANN class.

ICANN played sorcerer apprentice. They followed the IETF work. But did not
grasp the implication. The implication is that most of the DNS may become
chaos except in the Google Class run be a unique centralised Google Public
DNS. Just remember that the Chair of the IDNA2008 IETF WG is the boss of the
the Google Public DNS and that they have the Google IETF
internationalization specialist as an ICANN BoD Member.

This is obvioulsy something that China, Russia, India probably Europe cannot
accept easily. The day they understand (or actually the day they want to use
it) they will object and build their own DNS version (everyone can do that
and share its config files). Bye Bye ICANN. What is astonishing is that
ICANN does not even care …

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From: Stéphane Lancel <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 13:01:17 +0100

**
*Bien résumé !
Quelques commentaires dans le texte.
Good shot!
Some comments spread in the text.
*
2010/2/12 Elisabeth Blanconil <[email-masked]>

> Hi! Folks,
> I posted this on Tina Dam's blog. No answer. Thank you to correct me if
> said something wrong or if something is missing.
> Hebe
>

I suppose the URL is:
http://blog.icann.org/2010/02/idn-tlds-pre-registrations-declined-requests-etc/#comments

 ---
>
> IRT. IDNs, actually the problem is far simpler than ICANN makes it. And
> this where it becomes complex.
>
> China supports its IDNccTLD for a long through stubs.
>
The Chinese support is more complex. But yes :

> Actually they are in the root zone, but not in the ICANN root file. The
> problem is that IDNA was documented in 2003 in continuation of i-DNs
> existing IDNs and related to Unicode version 3-2. While Unicode had reached
> version 5. There was a need to make IDNA independent from Unicode version,
> to correct some imperfections, etc. This has been stabilized for the
> Internet by the recently published IDNA2008 version.
>
You can quote IAB's RFC 4690 and for newbies our http://wikidna.org working
site.
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4690.txt

> understood/used procedure.
:-)

> run your own “.com” in an other of the 65.000 classes.
Yes. We use to call them ULD as TLD decided by Users. Or they can be a TLD
lookalike. A local DNAME.

> and an incitation to all the others to start their own MYCANN class.
However, do you have a solution?
Louis Pouzin calls for national DNS? This could be allocated on a per class
basis: one for the US, one for China, etc. and ICANN managing the default
class 1?

Stephane

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From: Marie-France Berny <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 13 Feb 2010 03:23:57 +0100

Le 12 février 2010 13:01, Stéphane Lancel <[email-masked]> a écrit :

> lookalike. A local DNAME

Up, watching Vancouver.

> basis: one for the US, one for China, etc. and ICANN managing the default

This is an interesting idea. You mean a ccClass or something like that. Then
we should associate it in 3166-4?

If you allocate 100 classes per countries, it means 20.000 classes out of
65.000. This should be on a technical organisation basis. So we could for
example have a "mobile" class. This way one would not risk pollution, but we
could have the same DNs in different classes. This would make some kind
social networking very easily ?

Does someone knows what ITU thinks about it. Someone knows what Francis
Muguet had proposed?

Marie-France