Re: [idn] Requirements: caching servers

[Paul Hoffman / IMC <phoffman@imc.org>]

At 10:36 AM 2/2/00 -0800, ned.freed@innosoft.com wrote:
>>Paragraph 3 of section 2.1 says:
>
>> >The protocol should also allow creation of caching servers that do not
>> >understand the charset in which a request or response is encoded. Such
>> >caching servers should work as well for IDNs as they do for current
>> >domain names. The caching server performs correctly if it gives the
>> >essentially the same answer (without the authoritative bit) as the
>> >master server would have if presented with the same request.
>
>>I propose we remove this requirement. It puts a burden on the caching
>>server that I don't think should be there. If IDN has only one encoding,
>>this is a non-issue and confusing. If IDN has more than one encoding, I
>>think that all caching servers should be able to resolve any requests
>>immediately and not have to pass off the request to someone who knows about
>>the encoding.
>
>The problem is that you cannot assume there will be only one encoding at the
>present time. And your statement of what needs to happen in the event of
>multiple encodings is basically another way of stating the same requirement.

That makes sense. I propose that we change the first sentence to read "If 
the protocol allows more than one encoding, it should also allow..." That 
would make it clear that if IDN has only one encoding, the users can't just 
throw anything they want at the caching servers.

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--Internet Mail Consortium