RE: China

[Harald Tveit Alvestrand <Harald@Alvestrand.no>]

At 10:04 27.01.00 -0800, Andrew Draper wrote:

> >    UTF-8-based solution implies a need for extensive testing of
> >    implementations to make sure that they accomplish the necessary goals.
>
>Does this imply a requirement that the protocol shouldn't send non-ASCII DNS
>labels to servers which aren't expecting them?  To resolvers which aren't
>expecting them?

Possibly. A label type combined with an EDNS0-like version scheme would 
make that easy.

>However, who knows how many resolvers are out there built into printers and
>the like.  I expect that some of these will be quite fragile.  So I would
>suggest adding "Should not send non-ASCII names to resolvers which don't
>support IDNs" to the requirements.

There are 2 classes of failure:

- Fall-over-and-die failures; those are arguments for the SHOULD NOT
   (or rather a MUST NOT) requirement.
- Doesn't-look-nice failures; those I would place far less weight on.

The current (NU, IDN) tests should give us SOME idea.....if anyone's 
measuring....

                      Harald

--
Harald Tveit Alvestrand, EDB Maxware, Norway
Harald.Alvestrand@edb.maxware.no