Re: [idn] I-D ACTION:draft-ietf-idn-vidn-00.txt

["FDU - Sung Jae Shim" <sshim@mailbox.fdu.edu>]

Brian,

Thank you for your second set of comments on the draft. Please see below for
my responses to your comments.

Sung

----- Original Message -----
From: Brian W. Spolarich <briansp@walid.com>
To: FDU - Sung Jae Shim <sshim@mailbox.fdu.edu>
Cc: Harald Alvestrand <Harald@Alvestrand.no>; <idn@ops.ietf.org>
Sent: Sunday, November 26, 2000 12:52 PM
Subject: Re: [idn] I-D ACTION:draft-ietf-idn-vidn-00.txt


> On Sun, 26 Nov 2000, FDU - Sung Jae Shim wrote:
>
> | Of course, in this process of mapping, VIDN can check whether the
> | names in ASCII format are active or not on the Internet, and consider
> | only those active ones.
>
>   So to resolve name 'foo' I may need to generate O(n) DNS queries?  This
> means that VIDN could generate significantly more DNS traffic than current
> implementations, which violates requirement #33 of the
> 'draft-ietf-idn-requirements-03' draft.  It also makes resolver
> implementations much more complex than current ones.
>

Sung: Item [33] of <draft-ietf-idn-requirements-03.txt> says, "An
IDN-capable resolver or server SHALL NOT generate more traffic than a
non-IDN-capable resolver or server would when resolving an ASCII-only domain
name. The amount of traffic generated when resolving an IDN SHALL be similar
to that generated when resolving an ASCII-only name."

Sung: VIDN does not need any additional resolver or server for IDN but it
uses the current DNS as it is. Yes, VIDN needs multiple DNS lookups, but
only in the first query. After the first query, a user can set a virtual
domain name in non-ASCII format to its corresponding actual domain name in
ASCII format. Any subsequent queries to the same virtual domain name in
non-ASCII format will generate only
one query with the selected actual domain name in ASCII format.

>   What does it mean to 'check whether the names [...] are active or not'?
>

Sung: The conversion of a virtual domain name in non-ASCII format into ASCII
format may result in more than one potential actual domain name in ASCII
format. And some of these potential domain names in ASCII format may not be
existent/active on the Internet. VIDN checks which ones of these potential
domain names in ASCII format are actually registered and active on the
Internet through the DNS lookups.

>   Section 4.2 of your draft says that 'VIDN includes a coding scheme in
> order to make each virtual domain name [...] correspond to exactly one
> actual domain name [...]'.  Who assigns this code?  IANA?  If so, your
> draft neglects to state any IANA considerations.  How is it generated?
> How does a VIDN-capable application or resolver look up this code?
>

Sung: The codes may be administered by a standard body such as IANA. Or the
codes for each local language may be administered by a local standard body
in regions where the local language is widely spoken, for example, KrNIC for
Korean language, JpNIC for Japanese language, and so.

Sung: The code can be as simple as the one shown in the following example.
One simple coding can be the unicode of the virtual domain name represented
in a local
language. A server with a virtual domain name "x.y.z" will store the
corresponding unicode of "x.y.z" in the server. A client can verify, when a
user types "x.y.z" on the client side, whether it accessed the right server
or not by examining the code it retrieved from servers. Since the unicode of
"x.y.z" that user typed on the client can be easily generated, it can be
compared to the unicode retrieved from the server, and VIDN can immediately
determine whether it hits the correct server or not.

>   You suggest later keeping this code data 'in the mail HTML document at
> the server host'.  This approach has several problems:
>
>   - Not all *IDN-aware applications are web browsers;
>   - Not all *IDN-aware applications understand HTTP;
>   - Not all *IDN-aware applications use TCP.
>
>   I've noticed a tendency among some people discussing IDN to only focus
> on the issues particular to web browsers.  While browser-generated traffic
> constitutes the vast bulk of Internet activity today, there are a whole
> host of other applications and protocols that use domain names in their
> implementation, and any proposal that forgets this fact is fundamentally
> flawed in my opinion.
>

Sung: The code does not have to be stored in any specific format, but any
document format that is supported and understood by both client and server.
This
means that the code can be embedded in XML, HTML, WML, etc. as long as the
client can interpret the retrieved code correctly. Likewise, VIDN does not
require any specific intermediate transport protocol such as TCP/IP. The
only requirement is that the protocol must be understood among all
participating clients and servers.

>   -brian
>