[idn] New protocol proposal: IDNRA

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

Greetings again. Patrik Fältström and I have submitted a new proposal 
for the main IDN protocol. It was announced on this list earlier this 
week, but seems to have been lost among the other threads. You can 
read the draft at 
<http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-idn-idnra-00.txt>.

Basically, this protocol allows IDN to happen fully without updating 
*any* DNS servers anywhere. Given that all the proposals so far would 
require that applications and resolvers would have to be updated 
anyway, we thought that a proposal that didn't require the updating 
of the DNS servers on the Internet would be a big win for deployment. 
The draft also carefully explains what happens when some parts of the 
Internet are updated and others aren't.

The protocol has resolvers talking to DNS servers using RACE. The 
protocol solves the leakage problem that was heavily discussed on 
this mailing list a while back by specifying exactly what can and 
cannot be sent between old and new applications and resolvers.

Comments on the specifics in the draft are greatly appreciated.

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--Internet Mail Consortium