Internet Draft Naomasa Maruyama draft-ietf-idn-aceid-02.txt Yoshiro Yoneya Jun 19, 2000 JPNIC Expires Dec 19, 2001 Proposal for a determining process of ACE identifier Status of this memo This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html. Abstract In IETF IDN WG, various kinds of ASCII Compatible Encodings, hereafter abbreviated as "ACE", are discussed as methods for realizing multilingual domain names (hereafter referred to as "MDN"). Each ACE uses a prefix or a suffix as an identifier in order for MDNs to fit within the existing ASCII domain name space. In other words, acceptance of an ACE proposal as an Internet standard means that the existing ASCII domain name space will be partitioned, in order to accommodate MDN space. This document describes possible trouble in the standardization process of ACE, and proposes a solution for it. 1. Present situation and concern At present, some specifications relating to MDN specify their own ACE identifiers. In these drafts, multilingual domain names encoded into ASCII character strings, with the ACE identifiers in their heads or tails, are merely ASCII character strings. It is possible accidently or intentionally to register a domain name that is not an MDN but has the designated ACE identifier string. If this kind of registration takes place, there is no warranty that the domain name will be consistent with MDN semantics. Furthermore, there is no warranty that the name, interpreted as an MDN, will comply with the registration policies of the registry, when the ACE identifier proposal is finally accepted as an Internet standard. This might cause problems with name disputes and/or revocations. Therefore, the current situation letting independent ACE proposal authors arbitrarily select an ACE identifier, hence permitting domain name registrants registrer such names, may hinder deployment of MDN technology. 2. Selecting ACE identifiers In order to maintain a smooth standardization process for ACE, this document proposes a strategy for selecting and reserving of ACE identifiers and a method for assigning them. 2.1 The ACE identifier candidates and tentative suspension of registering relevant domain names All strings starting with a combination of two alpha-numericals, followed by two hyphens, are defined to be ACE prefix identifier candidates. All strings starting with two hyphens followed by two alpha-numericals are defined as ACE suffix identifier candidates. ACE prefix identifier candidates and ACE suffix identifier candidates are collectively called ACE identifier candidates. All the domain name registries recognized by ICANN SHOULD tentatively suspend registration of domain names which have an ACE prefix identifier candidate at the head of at least one label of the domain name and those which have an ACE suffix identifier candidate at the tail of at least one label of the name. These domain names are collectively called "relevant domain names". This suspension should be continued until September 1, 2001 00:00:00 UTC. 2.2 Survey of relevant domain name registration All registries recognized by ICANN SHOULD conduct a survey about relevant domain names registered in their zone, and report, no later than August 11, 2001 00:00:00 UTC, all of the ACE identifier candidates which are used by relevant domain names. 2.3 Selection of ACE identifiers and permanent blocking of relevant domain names The IDN WG or other organ of IETF or ICANN MUST summarize the reports and list ACE identifier candidates that are not reported to be used in registered domain names by August 18, 2001 00:00:00 UTC, and select ten to twenty ACE prefix identifier candidates and ten to twenty ACE suffix identifier candidates for ACE identifiers. Among these twenty to forty ACE identifiers, one prefix identifier and one suffix identifier will be used for experiments. Others will be used, one by one as ACE standard evolves. The list of ACE identifiers will be sent to IANA, and will be maintained by IANA from August 25, 2001 00:00:00 UTC. Domain names relevant to these identifiers SHOULD NOT be registered in any DNS zone, except for registration of multilingual domain names compliant to one of future IDN standards. This new restriction about the domain name space will be notified to all ICANN recognized registries by IANA immediately after it receives the list. 2.4 Blocking of registration for relevant domain names Domain names relevant to ACE identifiers selected by the procedure described in section 2.3 SHOULD NOT be registered in any zone of ICANN recognized registries except for registration of multilingual domain names compliant to one of future IDN standards. All ICANN recognized registries SHOULD implement this restriction no later than September 1, 2001 00:00:00 UTC. Registration for domain names relevant to ACE identifier candidates, tentatively suspended by 2.1, but not relevant to ACE identifiers selected by section 2.3 MAY be reopened from September 1, 2001 00:00:00 UTC. 3. Use of an ACE identifier in writing an ACE proposal When writing an ACE proposal using an ACE identifier, the author SHOULD either describe the ACE identifier as "to be decided" and left to discretion of the IDN WG or other organ of IETF or ICANN, or use either of the ACE identifiers for experiment defined in section 2.3, with a unique version number added after or before the prefix or suffix. If a proposal is validated and published as an Internet Draft, the IDN WG or other organ of IETF or ICANN MUST replace the "to be decided" part with an experimental identifier with a unique version number added after or before the prefix or the suffix. 4. Determination of ACE identifier When an Internet Draft relating to ACE is accepted as an Internet standard and becomes an RFC, IDN WG or other organ of IETF or ICANN MUST replace the experimental ACE identifier, augmented by the version number, with one of the ACE identifiers. 5. Security considerations None in particular. 6. Changes from the previous version We excluded suffixes of one hyphen followed by three alpha- numericals from the candidates. This is because we found that, as of Nov. 29, 2000, there were 23,921 domain names registered in the .JP space relevant to these suffixes. This was more than 10% of 227,852 total registrations in the JPNIC database at the moment, and hence we felt these suffixes are not good candidates. In addition to this and some minor linguistic corrections, we changed "The IDN WG" in section 2.3 to "The IDN WG or other organ of IETF or ICANN". 7. References [IDNREQ] Z Wenzel, J Seng, "Requirements of Internationalized Domain Names", draft-ietf-idn-requirements-03.txt, Jun 2000. [RACE] P Hoffman, "RACE: Row-based ASCII Compatible Encoding for IDN", draft-ietf-idn-race-02.txt, Oct 2000. [BRACE] A Costello, "BRACE: Bi-mode Row-based ASCII-Compatible Encoding for IDN", draft-ietf-idn-brace-00.txt, Sep 2000. [LACE] P Hoffman, "LACE: Length-based ASCII Compatible Encoding for IDN", draft-ietf-idn-lace-00.txt, Nov 2000. [VERSION] M Blanchet, "Handling versions of internationalized domain names protocols", draft-ietf-idn-version-00.txt, Nov 2000. 8. Acknowledgements We would like to express our hearty thanks to members of JPNIC IDN Task Force for valuable discussions about this issue. We also would like to express our appreciation to Mr. Dave Crocker for checking and correcting the preliminary version of this draft. 9. Author's Address Naomasa Maruyama Japan Network Information Center Fuundo Bldg 1F, 1-2 Kanda-ogawamachi Chiyoda-ku Tokyo 101-0052, Japan maruyama@nic.ad.jp Yoshiro Yoneya Japan Network Information Center Fuundo Bldg 1F, 1-2 Kanda-ogawamachi Chiyoda-ku Tokyo 101-0052, Japan yone@nic.ad.jp
