ISOC Statement on DNS

[Terry Weigler (by way of chiari mario <chiari.hm@flashnet.it>)]

Interessante presa di posizione. Durante la giornata del COESIN avevo
appunto chiesto lumi a Claudio (allocchio) su come poter un  giorno
registrare www.verità.com. A presto  mario


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
8 November 2000

DOMAIN NAMES COMPLICATED BY NON-ENGLISH CHARACTER SETS

Washington, DC -- The Internet Society strongly urges caution in the
execution of activity regarding the use of non-English character sets for
the registration of domain names. The Society further urges all parties to
allow the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) working group on
internationalized domain names to complete its work, before allowing the
public to register such names.

There is currently a commercial "testbed" initiative for certain registrars
to register domain names in non-English character sets in the .com, .net
and .org top level domains. One of the features of the "testbed" is a
provision for registration in three Asian languages, Korean, Japanese and
Chinese (traditional and simplified).

Despite the good intentions of opening the domain name system to a wider
international base of users, the "testbed" has been criticized by officials
of the Peoples Republic of China. A recent news article, published on the
Internet by ICB Toll Free News on October 27, 2000
(http://www.icbtollfree.com), reports that the "testbed" activity is viewed
quite negatively in China.

Regarding the initiation of the commercial "testbed" activity, the Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) issued a statement on
the subject. While not objecting to the "testbed," ICANN strongly supported
the IETF working group. ICANN emphasized the principle:

"A fundamental requirement in this work is to not disturb the current use
and operation of the domain name system, and for the DNS to continue to
allow any system anywhere to resolve any domain name."

ISOC believes the commercial "testbed" is premature under the technical
standards of the Internet. The IETF will in due course issue a Proposed
Standard for internationalized domain names.  One of the purposes of a
Proposed Standard is to accumulate community experience with a
specification that has been agreed upon by the Internet community. Testbeds
and interoperability tests are very useful at that stage, because they are
evaluating different implementations of the same standard, not different
approaches, and because the specification is considered firm.

In general, testbeds or interoperability tests before something is nearly
at Proposed Standard (or firm enough to be published as an Experimental
RFC) tend to be a waste of resources or confusing to the standards process.

Early implementations which are exposed to the Internet community may be
very helpful in evaluating different models and approaches that might
evolve into standards and may be a useful complement to the "design team"
process employed by the IETF.  But the principal purpose of such
implementations should be to develop and evaluate an approach, not to be a
"testbed" or "interoperability test" -- on the latter basis, there is
little to test.

While the IETF cannot prevent implementers pursuing other goals (and would
not attempt to do so), testbeds that are intended to aid and support the
IETF process should

(i) Include clear criteria for success or failure

(ii) Should be initiated only when there is an agreed-upon stable
specification (usually a Proposed Standard or Experimental RFC, as
discussed above), or at least only after a clear consensus decision from
the relevant IETF Working Group or Area.

(iii) Contain clear provisions for preventing end users and the systems on
which they are dependent from becoming locked into the technology being
developed/tested. Ideally, these provisions should be technical (e.g.,
cutoff dates or changes in ports or naming conventions) as well as
procedural (e.g., explicit warnings to users about possible changes).

Further, a true testbed should not be a mechanism to sway or control
Working Group decisions and actions.

Before positions on this complex issue become entrenched, and, more
importantly, before users of the Internet establish claims of ownership of
particular domain names, it is now time for a hiatus in the commercial
deployment of internationalized character sets in the operational DNS.


Contact:

David Maher
Vice President, Public Policy
Internet Society
Tel: +1 312 876 8055
Fax: +1 312 876 7934
Email: dwmaher a attglobal.net

Don Heath
President and CEO
Internet Society
11150 Sunset Hills Road
Suite 100
Reston, VA 20190-5321
USA
Tel: +1 703 326 9880
Fax: +1 703 326 9881
Email: heath a isoc.org

Lynn St. Amour
Executive Director and COO
Internet Society
4, rue des Falaises
CH-1205 Geneva
Switzerland
Tel: +41 22 807 1444
Fax: +41 22 807 1445
Email: st.amour a isoc.org



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