RE: [idn] host name vs. domain name

["McDonald, Ira" <imcdonald@sharplabs.com>]

Hi John,

With the widespread deployment of NAT boxes in corporate
intranets and corresponding explosion of 'ephemeral' IPv4
addresses in traffic over the public Internet, the assumption
that IPv4 addresses have any durable meaning is already
broken beyond repair (see 'Internet Transparency', RFC 2775,
February 2000).

Certainly the IETF Zero Configuration WG and DHCP WG are
attuned to this state of affairs.  It seems like a little
attention to this aspect (the non-durable relationship
between DNS 'name' and IPv4/IPv6 'address') should be
paid by the IDN WG.

Cheers,
- Ira McDonald, consulting architect at Sharp Labs America
  High North Inc

-----Original Message-----
From: John C Klensin [mailto:klensin@jck.com]
Sent: Saturday, March 18, 2000 1:15 PM
To: J. William Semich
Cc: idn@ops.ietf.org
Subject: Re: [idn] host name vs. domain name


--On Saturday, 18 March, 2000 15:44 -0500 "J. William Semich"
<bill@mail.nic.nu> wrote:

> Maybe it would help to create a list of those applications or protocols
> etc. that use the DNS, and prioritize that list by the ease with which
each
> can be made to work with idn.
> 
> For example:
> 
> 1. Web addresses - simple
> 2. Email - moderately difficult
> 3. Reverse look ups - very difficult
> 
> It may turn out that 1. and 2. above meet the primary needs of most for
idn
> on the Internet and we should work on requirements that facilitate idn in
> Web addresses and Email only...

Unfortunately, due partially to pressure from spammers, a significant
fraction of the email on the internet passes through systems that do reverse
lookups as a sanity check.

And, especially in IPv6 environments with its huge and hard-to-write
addresses and "frequent renumbering" assumptions, the number of internet
applications that uses the DNS should be equal to the
number of Internet applications.

   john