[54536] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: COM/NET informational message
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Steve Dyer)
Tue Jan 7 12:38:50 2003
Date: Tue, 07 Jan 2003 17:40:43 +0000
To: "Verd, Brad" <bverd@verisign.com>
From: Steve Dyer <steve@uk.com>
Cc: nanog@merit.edu, nom-steer@lists.nominet.org.uk,
rcochetti@verisign.com
In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20030107170025.0482cd90@pop3.jml.net>
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
At 17:00 07/01/2003 +0000, Verd, Brad wrote:
>>This message explains an upcoming change in certain behavior of the
>>com and net authoritative name servers related to internationalized
>>domain names (IDNs).
Hi,
This is to inform you that Characterisation GmbH (www.characterisation.de)=
=20
has patents pending Ref PCT/DE02/00632 filed 28th February 2001. It appears=
=20
that the method of resolution used by VGRS in the announcement below uses=20
this process. Characterisation GmbH is willing to discuss licence=
agreements.
Best regards
Stephen Dyer
Gesch=E4ftsf=FChrender Gesellschafter
Characterisation GmbH
>>VeriSign Global Registry Services (VGRS) has been a longtime advocate
>>of IDNs. Our IDN Test Bed has been active for over two years and we
>>have followed and supported IETF developments in the IDN area. The
>>protocol for IDNs developed by the IETF's IDN Working Group has been
>>approved by the IESG and we anticipate that RFCs will be published
>>soon. That protocol, Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications
>>(IDNA), calls for changes to individual applications to support IDNs.
>>VGRS has developed a plug-in, called i-Nav, for Microsoft's Internet
>>Explorer browser to support IDNs in a manner consistent with IDNA.
>>i-Nav is free and more information about it is available at
>><<http://www.idnnow.com>>.
>>
>>Before IDNA, some application developers had developed proprietary
>>mechanisms designed to support IDNs. The Internet Explorer browser,
>>for example, sends a DNS query in UTF-8 or another, local encoding
>>when a user types a domain name with characters other than letters,
>>digits and the hypen in the address bar. These efforts, however, were
>>not entirely successful. For example, if such a domain name ends in
>>com or net these queries reach the com/net name servers and fail.
>>
>>Our research indicates that the average user expects IDNs to work but
>>does not understand the need for additional software to support this
>>functionality. Such users attempt to enter IDNs in their browsers,
>>but when the queries fail, they become frustrated and do not know
>>what action to take to enable IDNs. They are unaware that downloading
>>a browser plug-in such as i-Nav would enable IDN resolution.
>>To improve this user experience and to encourage the adoption of an
>>application that supports IDNA, VGRS is announcing a measure intended
>>to stimulate widespread distribution of the i-Nav plug-in. Starting
>>on January 3, 2003, some queries to the com/net name servers that
>>previously failed with a DNS Name Error (NXDOMAIN) response will
>>instead return an address (A) record. Any queries for A records with
>>at least one octet greater than decimal 127 in the second-level label
>>will trigger this A record response. For example, a query for the A
>>record for "foo?.com", where "?" represents an octet with a value
>>greater than 127, would return an A record rather than NXDOMAIN
>>response. The goal is to match unrecognized domain names generated by
>>browsers attempting to resolve IDNs. Since browsers construct DNS
>>queries for such IDNs using UTF-8 or a local encoding, and since
>>these encodings use octets with all possible values (i.e., from 0
>>through 255), the presence of octets with values greater than 127 as
>>described above can indicate a web browser's failed IDN resolution
>>attempt.
>>
>>The A record that will be returned by VGRS points to a farm of web
>>servers that will attempt to resolve the query. The browser that sent
>>the original DNS query will connect to one of these web servers and
>>its HTTP request will contain a Host header with the representation
>>of the IDN originally entered by the user in the address bar. The web
>>servers will attempt to interpret the contents of the Host header. If
>>the Host header corresponds to an IDN registered in VeriSign's IDN
>>Test Bed, the web server will return a page that gives the user an
>>opportunity to download the free i-Nav plug-in. The page will also
>>allow the user to navigate to the corresponding IDN web site via an
>>HTTP redirect. If the contents of the Host header cannot be matched
>>to an IDN registered in the Testbed, the web server will return an
>>HTTP 404 response.
>>
>>If a user downloads and installs the i-Nav plug-in, his or her
>>browser will convert any IDNs entered to ASCII compatible encoding
>>(ACE) format, according to the method described in IDNA. As a result,
>>subsequent DNS queries will use ASCII characters only.
>>The user experience for web browsing will change only slightly from
>>the current experience if the contents of the Host header cannot be
>>interpreted. If the web farm cannot match the Host header to an IDN,
>>the user will see an error page resulting from the HTTP 404 error
>>returned, rather than an error page resulting from a DNS NXDOMAIN
>>response. The web servers refuse connections on all other UDP and TCP
>>ports, so other network services are minimally affected.
>>
>>The overriding goal is to improve Internet navigation by encouraging
>>widespread adoption of software supporting the emerging IETF
>>standards for IDNs. These measures allow distribution of such
>>software.
>>
>>- --------
>>Brad Verd
>>Resolution Systems Operations Manager
>>VeriSign Global Registry Services
>><<http://www.verisign-grs.com>>
>>Email: bverd@verisign.com
>>- --------
>>
>>
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>
>
>--
>Joel Rowbottom BSc.(Hons) - vaguely human and mostly harmless
>Self-confessed was-kid, Unix geek & Net addict since 1991
>Personal: http://www.joel.co.uk | Pics: http://photos.jml.net
>
