Re: [idn] New protocol proposal: IDNRA

[John C Klensin <klensin@jck.com>]

--On Sunday, 27 August, 2000 14:05 -0700 "Paul Hoffman / IMC"
<phoffman@imc.org> wrote:

> However, I take a position nearer the middle of you two. I
> believe new companies that get IDN domains will probably *not*
> get non-IDN names for the use of people who have not updated:
> they'll expect people to update. And I would never put the UUAB
> (ugly, unreadable ASCII blob) on the back of my business card.
> I would simply say "if you want to communicate with me, upgrade
> if you haven't already". 

Right.  Ever been in a would-be profit-making business with
competitors?   Your potential customers will find someone they
can communicate with and will do so without trying to wait for
(or convince) their IT depts (or equivalent) to upgrade their
servers.  If you take a position as above, they will be long gone
before they get converted.

The cause of maxims like "the customer is always right" come
exactly out of situations like this and those who do not heed
them tend to end up out of business.

> Where Patrik and I differ is the length of time it will take
> for 90% of the people to upgrade their the applications that
> will use IDNs. I believe it will be more on the order of one
> year, not ten.

Personally, based on the deployment time for the DNS itself --
despite occurring in a much smaller network where the possibility
of central control existed-- I think Patrik is being wildly
optimistic, probably by a factor of two, rather than just a year
or so.   Deploying a new application is, due to the nature of the
Internet and the end to end principle, fairly easy.   Upgrading
one has proven to be much harder (e.g., MIME and the SMTP
extensions offered a lot to users, but I'd guess we are still
well under 90% penentration of competent and conforming
implementations nearly seven years out).  And changing
infrastructure --and the DNS and its protocols is certainly
infrastructure-- is much worse, since both the servers/resolvers
and the applications need to be upgraded.  Now, of course, if it
is possible to deploy the new mechanisms without changing
_anything_, more rapid estimates become feasible.  Maybe only a
decade or so :-(

    john