Update.

[libidn.git] / doc / specifications / draft-iab-idn-nextsteps-05.txt

Network Working Group                                         J. Klensin
Internet-Draft
Expires: October 14, 2006                                   P. Faltstrom
                                                                     IAB
                                                          April 12, 2006


  Review and Recommendations for Internationalized Domain Names (IDN)
                    draft-iab-idn-nextsteps-05.txt

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Copyright Notice

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2006).

Abstract

   This note describes issues raised by the deployment and use of
   Internationalized Domain Names.  It describes problems both at the
   time of registration and those for use of those names for use in the
   DNS.  It recommends that IETF should update the IDN related RFCs and
   a framework to be followed in doing so, as well as summarizing and
   identifying some work that is required outside the IETF.  In
   particular, it proposes that some changes be investigated for the



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   IDNA standard and its supporting tables, based on experience gained
   since those standards were completed.


Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
     1.1.  Status of this Document and its Recommendations  . . . . .  4
     1.2.  The IDNA Standard  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
     1.3.  Unicode Documents  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
     1.4.  Definitions  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
       1.4.1.  Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
       1.4.2.  Script . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
       1.4.3.  Multilingual . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
       1.4.4.  Localization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
       1.4.5.  Internationalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
     1.5.  Statements and Guidelines  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
       1.5.1.  IESG Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
       1.5.2.  ICANN statements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
   2.  Problems and Issues  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
     2.1.  User conceptions, local character sets, and input
           issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
     2.2.  Examples of issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
       2.2.1.  Language specific character matching . . . . . . . . . 12
       2.2.2.  Multiple scripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
       2.2.3.  Normalization and Character Mappings . . . . . . . . . 13
       2.2.4.  URLs in Printed Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
       2.2.5.  Bidirectional text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
       2.2.6.  Confusable Character Issues  . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
       2.2.7.  The IESG Statement and IDNA issues . . . . . . . . . . 17
       2.2.8.  Versions of Unicode  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
   3.  Framework for next steps in IDN development  . . . . . . . . . 19
     3.1.  Issues within the scope of the IETF  . . . . . . . . . . . 19
       3.1.1.  Review of IDNA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
       3.1.2.  Non-DNS and Above-DNS Internationalization
               Approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
       3.1.3.  Security issues, certificates, etc.  . . . . . . . . . 21
       3.1.4.  Non US-ASCII in local part of email addresses  . . . . 22
       3.1.5.  Use of the Unicode Character Set in the IETF . . . . . 22
     3.2.  Issues that fall within the purview of ICANN . . . . . . . 23
       3.2.1.  Dispute resolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
       3.2.2.  Policy at registries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
       3.2.3.  IDN TLDs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
   4.  Specific Recommendations for Next Steps  . . . . . . . . . . . 24
     4.1.  Reduction of permitted character list  . . . . . . . . . . 24
       4.1.1.  Elimination of all non-language characters . . . . . . 25
       4.1.2.  Elimination of word-separation punctuation . . . . . . 25
     4.2.  Updating to new versions of Unicode  . . . . . . . . . . . 25



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     4.3.  Combining Characters and Character Components  . . . . . . 26
     4.4.  Role and Uses of the DNS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
     4.5.  Databases of Registered Names  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
   5.  Security Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
   6.  Acknowledgments  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
   7.  Change History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
     7.1.  Changes for version -01  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
     7.2.  Changes for version -02  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
     7.3.  Changes for Version -03  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
     7.4.  Changes for version -04  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
     7.5.  Changes for version -05  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
   8.  References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
     8.1.  Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
     8.2.  Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
   Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
   Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements . . . . . . . . . . 35



































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1.  Introduction

1.1.  Status of this Document and its Recommendations

   This document reviews the IDN landscape from an IETF perspective and
   presents the recommendations and conclusions of the IAB, based
   partially on input from an ad hoc committee charged with reviewing
   IDN issues and the path forward (See Section 6).  Its recommendations
   are recommendations to the IETF, or in a few cases to other bodies,
   for topics to be examined and actions to be taken if those bodies,
   after their examinations, consider those actions appropriate.

   IMPORTANT: The IAB has not yet reached consensus that this document
   is ready for final publication.  While considerable input from the
   members of the ad hoc committee went into the document, no claim is
   made that it represents the consensus of that group.  However, the
   IAB concluded that it was appropriate to expose these versions, as
   working drafts, for community comment and feedback.  Such comments
   should be sent to iab@iab.org.

1.2.  The IDNA Standard

   During 2002 IETF completed the following RFCs that, together, define
   IDNs:

   RFC 3454 Preparation of Internationalized Strings ("Stringprep")
      [RFC3454].
      Stringprep is a generic mechanism for taking a Unicode string and
      converting it into a canonical format.  Stringprep itself is just
      a collection of rules, tables, and operations.  Any protocol or
      algorithm that uses it must define a "Stringprep profile", which
      specifies which of those rules are applied, how, and with which
      characteristics.

   RFC 3490 Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA)
      [RFC3490].
      IDNA is the base specification in this group.  It specifies that
      Nameprep is used as the Stringprep profile for domain names, and
      that Punycode is the relevant encoding mechanism for use in
      generating an ASCII-compatible ("ACE") form of the name.  It also
      applies some additional conversions and character filtering that
      are not part of Nameprep.

   RFC 3491 Nameprep: A Stringprep Profile for Internationalized Domain
      Names (IDN) [RFC3491].
      Nameprep is one such profile.  It is designed to meet the specific
      needs of IDNs and, in particular, to support case-folding for
      scripts that support what are traditionally known as upper and



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      lower case forms of the same letters.  The result of the Nameprep
      algorithm is a string containing a subset of the Unicode Character
      set, normalized and case folded so that case insensitive
      comparison can be made.

   RFC 3492 Punycode: A Bootstring encoding of Unicode for
      Internationalized Domain Names in Applications (IDNA) [RFC3492].
      Punycode is a mechanism for encoding a Unicode string in ASCII
      characters.  The characters used are the same the subset of
      characters that are allowed in the hostname definition of DNS,
      i.e., the "letter, digit, and hyphen" characters, sometimes known
      as "LDH".

1.3.  Unicode Documents

   Unicode is used as the base, and defining, character set for IDN.
   Unicode is standardized by the Unicode Consortium, and synchronized
   with ISO to create ISO/IEC 10646 [ISO10646].  At the time the RFCs
   mentioned earlier were created, Unicode was at version 3.2.  For
   reasons explained later, it was necessary to pick a particular, then-
   current, version of Unicode when IDNA was adopted.  Consequently, the
   RFCs are explicitly dependent on Unicode version 3.2 [Unicode32].
   There is, at present, no established mechanism for modifying the IDNA
   RFCs to use newer Unicode versions (see Section 2.2.8).

   Unicode is a very large and complex character set.  (The term
   "character set" or "charset" is used in a way that is peculiar to the
   IETF and may not be the same as the usage in other bodies and
   contexts.)  The Unicode Standard and related documents are created
   and maintained by the Unicode Technical Committee (UTC), one of the
   committees of the Unicode Consortium.

   The Consortium first published The Unicode Standard [Unicode10] in
   1991, and continues to develop standards based on that original work.
   Unicode is developed in conjunction with the International
   Organization for Standardization, and it shares its character
   repertoire with ISO/IEC 10646.  Unicode and ISO/IEC 10646 function
   equivalently as character encodings, but The Unicode Standard
   contains much more information for implementers, covering -- in depth
   -- topics such as bitwise encoding, collation, and rendering.  The
   Unicode Standard enumerates a multitude of character properties,
   including those needed for supporting bidirectional text.  The
   Unicode Consortium and ISO standards do use slightly different
   terminology.

1.4.  Definitions

   The following terms and their meanings are critical to understanding



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   the rest of this document and to discussions of IDNs more generally.
   These terms are derived from [RFC3536], which contains additional
   discussion of some of them.

1.4.1.  Language

   A language is a way that humans interact.  The use of language occurs
   in many forms, including speech, writing, and signing.

   Some languages have a close relationship between the written and
   spoken forms, while others have a looser relationship.  RFC 3066
   [RFC3066] discusses languages in more detail and provides identifiers
   for languages for use in Internet protocols.  Computer languages are
   explicitly excluded from this definition.  The most recent IETF work
   in this area, and on script identification (see below), is documented
   in [ltru-registry] and [ltru-initial].

1.4.2.  Script

   A script is a set of graphic characters used for the written form of
   one or more languages.  This definition is the one used in
   [ISO10646].

   Examples of scripts are Arabic, Cyrillic, Greek, Han (the so-called
   ideographs used in writing Chinese, Japanese, and Korean), and Latin
   (more properly "Roman", see below), Arabic, Greek, and Latin are, of
   course, also names of languages.  Some issues with script
   identification and relationships with other standards are discussed
   in [ltru-registry].

1.4.3.  Multilingual

   The term "multilingual" has many widely-varying definitions and thus
   is not recommended for use in standards.  Some of the definitions
   relate to the ability to handle international characters; other
   definitions relate to the ability to handle multiple charsets; and
   still others relate to the ability to handle multiple languages.

   While this term has been deprecated for IETF-related uses and does
   not otherwise appear in this document, a discussion here seemed
   appropriate since the term is still widely used in some discussions
   of IDNs.

1.4.4.  Localization

   Localization is the process of adapting an internationalized
   application platform or application to a specific cultural
   environment.  In localization, the same semantics are preserved while



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   the syntax or presentation forms may be changed.

   Localization is the act of tailoring an application for a different
   language or script or culture.  Some internationalized applications
   can handle a wide variety of languages.  Typical users only
   understand a small number of languages, so the program must be
   tailored to interact with users in just the languages they know.

   Somewhat different definitions for localization and
   internationalization (see below) are used by groups other than the
   IETF.  See [W3C-Localization] for one example.

1.4.5.  Internationalization

   In the IETF, the term "internationalization" is used to describe
   adding or improving the handling of non-ASCII text in a protocol.
   Other bodies use the term in other ways, often ones that are subtly
   different from each other.  The term "internationalization" is often
   abbreviated "i18n".

   Many protocols that handle text only handle the characters associated
   with one script (often, a subset of the characters used in writing
   English text), or leave the question of what character set is used up
   to local guesswork (which leads, of course, to interoperability
   problems).  Adding non-ASCII text to such a protocol allows the
   protocol to handle more scripts, with the intention of being able to
   include all of the scripts that are useful in the world.  It should
   be noted that many English words cannot be written in ASCII, various
   mythologies notwithstanding.

1.5.  Statements and Guidelines

   When the IDN RFCs were published, IESG and ICANN made statements that
   were intended to guide deployment and future work.  In recent months,
   ICANN has updated its statement and others have also made
   contributions.  It is worth noting that the quality of understanding
   of internationalization issues as applied to the DNS has evolved
   considerably over the last few years.  Organizations that took
   specific positions a year or more ago might not make exactly the same
   statements today.

1.5.1.  IESG Statement

   The IESG made a statement on IDNA [IESG-IDN]:







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       IDNA, through its requirement of Nameprep [RFC3491], uses
       equivalence tables that are based only on the characters
       themselves; no attention is paid to the intended language (if any)
       for the domain name. However, for many domain names, the intended
       language of one or more parts of the domain name actually does
       matter to the users.

       Similarly, many names cannot be presented and used without
       ambiguity unless the scripts to which their characters belong are
       known. In both cases, this additional information should be of
       concern to the registry.

   The statement is longer than this, but these paragraphs are the
   important ones.  The rest of the statement are explanations and
   examples.

1.5.2.  ICANN statements

1.5.2.1.  Initial ICANN Guidelines

   Soon after the IDNA standard was adopted, ICANN produced an initial
   version of its "IDN Guidelines" [ICANNv1].  This document was
   intended to serve two purposes.  The first was to provide a basis for
   releasing the gTLD registries that had been established by ICANN from
   a contractual restriction on the registration of labels containing
   hyphens in the third and fourth positions.  The second was to provide
   a general framework for the development of registry policies for the
   implementation of IDN.

   One of the key components of this framework was prescribing strict
   compliance with RFCs 3490, 3491, and 3492.  These specifications
   established the ACE (ASCII-Compatible Encoding) scheme for IDN use,
   known as "Punycode", and the various rules for its use.  The
   specifications designated Punycode, supported by those rules, as the
   sole such encoding to be used with the DNS.

   Limitations on the characters available for inclusion in IDNs were
   mandated by two devices.  The first was by requiring an "inclusion-
   based approach (meaning that code points that are not explicitly
   permitted by the registry are prohibited) for identifying permissible
   code points from among the full Unicode repertoire."  The second
   device required the association of every IDN with a specific
   language, with additional policies also being language based:

   "In implementing the IDN standards, top-level domain registries will
   (a) associate each registered internationalized domain name with one
   language or set of languages,
   (b) employ language-specific registration and administration rules



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   that are documented and publicly available, such as the reservation
   of all domain names with equivalent character variants in the
   languages associated with the registered domain name, and,
   (c) where the registry finds that the registration and administration
   rules for a given language would benefit from a character variants
   table, allow registrations in that language only when an appropriate
   table is available. ...  In implementing the IDN standards, top-level
   domain registries should, at least initially, limit any given domain
   label (such as a second-level domain name) to the characters
   associated with one language or set of languages only."

   It was left to each TLD registry to define the character repertoire
   it would associate with any given language.  This led to significant
   variation from registry to registry, with further heterogeneity in
   the underlying language-based IDN policies.  If the guidelines had
   made provision for IDN policies also being based on script, a
   substantial amount of the resulting ambiguity could have been
   avoided.  However, they did not, and the sequence of events leading
   to the present review of IDNA was thus triggered.

1.5.2.2.  ICANN Version 2 Guidelines

   One of responses of the TLD registries to what was widely perceived
   as a crisis situation, was to invoke the mechanism described in the
   initial guidelines: "As the deployment of IDNs proceeds, ICANN and
   the IDN registries will review these Guidelines at regular intervals,
   and revise them as necessary based on experience."

   The pivotal requirement was the modification of the guidelines to
   permit script-based IDN policies.  Further concern was expressed
   about the need for realistically implementable mechanisms for the
   propagation of TLD registry policies into the lower levels of their
   name trees.  In addition to the anticipated increase of constraint on
   the protocol level, one obvious additional approach would be to
   replace the guidelines by an instrument which itself had clear status
   in the IETF's normative framework.  A BCP was therefore seen as the
   appropriate focus for longer-term effort.  The most pressing issues
   would be dealt with in the interim by incremental modification to the
   guidelines, but no need was seen for the detailed further development
   of those guidelines once that incremental modification was complete..

   The outcome of this action was a version 2.0 of the guidelines
   [ICANNv2] which was endorsed by the ICANN Board on November 8, 2005
   for a period of nine months.  The Board stated further that it "tasks
   the IDN working group to continue its important work and return to
   the board with specific IDN improvement recommendations before the
   ICANN Meeting in Morocco" and "supports the working group's continued
   action to reframe the guidelines completely in a manner appropriate



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   for further development as a Best Current Practices (BCP) document,
   to ensure that the Guideline directions will be used deeper into the
   DNS hierarchy and within TLD's where ICANN has a lesser policy
   relationship."

   Retaining the inclusion-based approach established in version 1.0,
   the crucial addition to the policy framework is that:

   "All code points in a single label will be taken from the same script
   as determined by the Unicode Standard Annex #24: Script Names at
   http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr24.  Exception to this is
   permissible for languages with established orthographies and
   conventions that require the commingled use of multiple scripts.  In
   such cases, visually confusable characters from different scripts
   will not be allowed to co-exist in a single set of permissible
   codepoints unless a corresponding policy and character table is
   clearly defined."

   Additionally:

   "Permissible code points will not include: (a) line symbol-drawing
   characters (as those in the Unicode Box Drawing block), (b) symbols
   and icons that are neither alphanumeric nor ideographic language
   characters, such as typographic and pictographic dingbats, (c)
   characters with well-established functions as protocol elements, (d)
   punctuation marks used solely to indicate the structure of
   sentences."

   Attention has been called to several points that are not adequately
   dealt with (if at all) in the version 2.0 guidelines but which ought
   to be included in the policy framework without waiting for the
   production and release of a document based on a "best practices"
   model.  The term "BCP" above does not necessarily refer to an IETF
   consensus document.  The recommendations to be put to the ICANN Board
   prior to its meeting in Morocco (in late June 2006) will therefore be
   collated incrementally and appear in interim version 2.n releases of
   the guidelines.


2.  Problems and Issues

   This section intentionally mixes problems and issues of several
   types.  Each subsection outlines something that is perceived to be a
   problem or issue "with IDNs", therefore needing correction.  Some of
   these issues can be at least partially resolved by making changes to
   elements of the IDNA protocol or tables.  Others will exist as long
   as people have expectations of IDNs that are inconsistent with the
   basic DNS architecture.  It is important to identify this entire



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   range of problems because users, registrants, and policy makers often
   do not understand the protocol and other technical issues but only
   the difference between what they believe happens or should happen and
   what actually happens.  As long as those differences exist, there
   will be demands for functionality or policy changes for IDN.  Of
   course, some of these demands will be less realistic than others but
   even the realistic ones should be understood in the same context as
   the others.

2.1.  User conceptions, local character sets, and input issues

   People use "words" when they think of things and wish others to think
   of them too.  For example "orange", "tree", "restaurant" or "Acme
   Inc".  Words are normally in a specific language, such as English or
   Swedish.  The DNS, however, supports character-string labels, not
   "words".  While it is useful, especially for mnemonic value or to
   identify objects, for actual words to be used as DNS labels, other
   constraints on the DNS make it impossible to guarantee that it will
   be possible to represent every word in every language as a DNS label,
   internationalized or not.

   When writing or typing the label (or word), a script must be selected
   and a charset must be picked for use with that script.  That choice
   of charset is typically not under the control of the user on a per
   word or per document basis, but may depend on local input devices,
   keyboard or terminal drivers, or other decisions made by operating
   system or even hardware designers and implementers.

   If that charset, or the local charset being used by the relevant
   operating system or application software, is not Unicode, a further
   conversion must be performed to produce Unicode.  How often this is
   an issue depends on estimates of how widely Unicode is deployed as
   the native character set for hardware, operating systems, and
   applications.  Those estimates differ widely, with some Unicode
   advocates claiming that it is used in the vast majority of systems
   and applications today.  Others are more skeptical, pointing out
   that:

   o  ISO 8859 versions [ISO.8859.2003] and even national variations of
      ISO 646 [ISO.646.1991] are still widely used in parts of Europe;
   o  code-table switching methods, typically based on the techniques of
      ISO 2022 [ISO.2022.1986] are still in general use in many parts of
      the world, especially in Japan with Shift-JIS and its variations;
   o  that computing, systems, and communications in China tend to use
      one or more of the national "GB" standards rather than native
      Unicode;





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   o  and so on.

   Not all charsets define their characters in the same way and not all
   pre-existing coding systems were incorporated into Unicode without
   changes.  Sometimes local distinctions were made that Unicode does
   not make or vice versa.  Consequently, conversion from other systems
   to Unicode may potentially lose information.

   The Unicode string that results from this processing --processing
   that is trivial in a Unicode-native system but that may be
   significant in others-- is then used as input to IDNA.

2.2.  Examples of issues

   While much of the discussion below is stated in terms of Unicode
   codings and associated rules, the IAB believes that some of the
   issues are actually not about the Unicode Character set per se, but
   about how distributed matching systems operate in reality, and about
   what implications the distributed delayed search for stored data that
   characterizes the DNS have on the mapping algorithms.

2.2.1.  Language specific character matching

   There are similar words that can be expressed in multiple languages.
   For example the name Torbjorn in Norwegian and Swedish.  In Norwegian
   it is spelled with the character U+00F8 (LATIN SMALL LETTER O WITH
   STROKE) in the second syllable, while in Swedish it is spelled with
   U+00F6 (LATIN SMALL LETTER O WITH DIAERESIS).  Those characters are
   not treated as equivalent according to the Unicode consortium while
   most people speaking Swedish, Danish and Norwegian probably think
   they are equivalent.

   It is neither possible nor desirable to make these characters
   equivalent on a global basis.  To do so would, for this example
   rationalize the situation in Sweden while causing considerable
   confusion in Germany, where the U+00F8 character is never used in the
   German language.  But the "variant" model introduced in [RFC3743] and
   [RFC4290] can be used by a registry to prevent the worst consequence
   of the possible confusion, either by ensuring that both names are
   registered to same party in a given domain or that one of them is
   completely prohibited.

2.2.2.  Multiple scripts

   There are languages in the world that can be expressed using multiple
   scripts.  For example some Eastern European and Central Asian
   languages can be expressed in either Cyrillic or Roman characters or
   some African and Southeast Asian languages can be expressed in either



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   Arabic or Roman characters A few languages can even be written in
   three different scripts.  In other cases, the language is typically
   written in a combination of scripts (e.g., Kanji and Kana for
   Japanese, Hangul and Hanji for Korean).  Because of this, the same
   word, in the same language, can be expressed in different ways.  For
   some languages, only a single script is normally used to write a
   single word; for others, mixed scripts are required; and, for still
   others, special circumstances may dictate mixing scripts in labels
   although that is not normally done for "words".  For IDN purposes,
   these variations make the definition of "script" extremely sensitive,
   especially since ICANN is now recommending that it be used as the
   primary basis for registry policies.  However essential it may be to
   prohibit mixed-script labels, additional policy nuance is required
   for "languages with established orthographies and conventions that
   require the commingled use of multiple scripts".

2.2.3.  Normalization and Character Mappings

   Unicode contains several different models for representing
   characters.  The Chinese (Han)-derived characters of the "CJK"
   languages are "unified", i.e., characters with common derivation and
   similar appearances are assigned to the same code point.  European
   characters derived from a Greek-Roman base are separated into
   separate code blocks for "Latin", Greek and Cyrillic even when
   individual characters are identical in both form and semantics.
   Separate code points based on font differences alone are generally
   prohibited, but a large number of characters for "mathematical" use
   have been assigned separate code points even though they differ from
   base ASCII characters only by font attributes such as "script",
   "bold", or "italic".  Some characters that often appear together are
   treated as typographical digraphs with specific code points assigned
   to the combination, others require that the two-character sequences
   be used, and still others are available in both forms.  Some Roman-
   based letters that were developed as decorated variations on the
   basic Latin letter collection (e.g., by addition of diacritical
   marks) are assigned code points as individual characters, others must
   be built up as two (or more) character sequences using "composing
   characters".

   Many of these differences result from the desire to maintain backward
   compatibility while the standard evolved historically, and are hence
   understandable.  However, the DNS requires precise knowledge of which
   codes and code sequences represent the same character and which ones
   do not.  Limiting the potential difficulties with confusable
   characters (see Section 2.2.6) requires even more knowledge of which
   characters might look alike in some fonts but not in others.  These
   variations make it difficult or impossible to apply a single set of
   rules to all of Unicode and, in doing so, satisfy everyone and their



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   perceived needs.  Instead, more or less complex mapping tables,
   defined on a character by character basis, are required to
   "normalize" different representations of the same character to a
   single form so that matching is possible.

   Unless normalization rules, such as those that underlie Nameprep, are
   applied, characters that are essentially identical will not match in
   the DNS, creating many opportunities for problems.  The most common
   one is that, due to the process above before a word ends up being a
   Unicode string, a single word can end up being expressed as more than
   one unique Unicode string.

   IDNA attempts to compensate for some of these problems by using a
   normalization algorithm defined by the Unicode Consortium.  This
   algorithm can change a sequence of one or more Unicode characters to
   another set of characters.  One example is that the base character
   U+0061 (LATIN SMALL LETTER A) followed by U+0308 (COMBINING
   DIAERESIS) is changed to the single Unicode character U+00E4 (LATIN
   SMALL LETTER A WITH DIAERESIS).

   This Unicode normalization process accounts only for simple character
   equivalences, not equivalences that are language or script dependent.
   For example, as mentioned above, the characters U+00F8 (LATIN SMALL
   LETTER O WITH STROKE) and U+00F6 (LATIN SMALL LETTER O WITH
   DIAERESIS) are considered to match in Swedish (and some other
   languages), but not for all languages than use either of the
   characters.  Having these characters be treated as equivalent in some
   contexts and not in others requires decisions and mechanisms that, in
   turn, depend much more on context than either IDNA or the Unicode
   character-based normalization tables can provide.

   If we leave Roman-based scripts and examine those based on Chinese
   characters, we see there is also an absence of specific, lexigraphic,
   rules for transformations between Traditional and Simplified Chinese.
   Even if there were such rules, unification of Japanese and Korean
   characters with Chinese ones would make it impossible to normalize
   Traditional Chinese into Simplified Chinese ones without causing
   problems in Japanese and Korean use of the same characters.

   More generally, while some mappings, such as those between
   precomposed Roman-based characters and the equivalent multiple code
   point composed character sequences, depend only on the characters
   themselves, in many or most cases, such as the case with Swedish
   above, the mapping is language or culturally dependent.  There have
   been discussions as to whether different canonicalization rules (in
   addition to or instead of Unicode normalization) should be, or could
   be, applied differently to different languages or scripts.  The fact
   that most scripts included in Unicode have been initially



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   incorporated by copying an existing standard more or less intact has
   impact on the optimization of these algorithms and on forward
   compatibility.  Even if the language is known and language-specific
   rules can be defined, dependencies on the language do not disappear.
   Canonicalization operations are not possible unless they either
   depend only on short sequences of text or have significant context
   available that is not obvious from the text itself.  DNS lookups and
   many other operations do not have a way to capture and utilize the
   language or other information that would be needed to provide that
   context.

   These variations in languages and in user perceptions of characters
   make it difficult or impossible to provide uniform algorithms for
   matching Unicode strings in a way that no end users are ever
   surprised by the result.  For closely-related scripts or characters,
   surprises may even be frequent.  However, because uniform algorithms
   are required for mappings that are applied when names are looked up
   in the DNS, the rules that are chosen will always represent an
   approximation that will be more or less successful in minimizing
   those user surprises.  The current Nameprep and Stringprep algorithms
   use mapping tables to "normalize" different representations of the
   same text to a single form so that matching is possible.

   More details on the creation of the normalization algorithms can be
   found in the Unicode Specification and the associated Technical
   Reports [UTR] and Annexes.  Technical Report #36 [UTR36] and [UTR39]
   are specifically related to the IDN discussion.

2.2.4.  URLs in Printed Form

   URLs and other identifiers appear, not only in electronic forms from
   which they can (at least in principle) be accurately copied and
   "pasted" but in printed forms from which the user must transcribe
   them into the computer system.  This is often known as the "side of
   the bus problem" because a particularly problematic version of it
   requires that the user be able to observe and accurately remember a
   URL that is quickly-glimpsed in a transient form -- a billboard seen
   while driving, a sign on the side of a passing vehicle, a television
   advertisement that is not frequently repeated or on-screen for a long
   time, and so on.

   The difficulty, in short, is that two Unicode strings that are
   actually different might look exactly the same, especially when there
   is no time to study them.  This is because, for example, some glyphs
   in Cyrillic, Greek and Latin do look the same, but have been assigned
   different codepoints in Unicode.  Worse, one needs to be reasonably
   familiar with a script and how it is used to understand how much
   characters can reasonably vary as the result of artistic fonts and



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   typography.  For example, there are a few fonts for Latin characters
   that are sufficiently highly ornamented that an observer might easily
   confuse some of the characters with characters in Thai script.

2.2.5.  Bidirectional text

   Some scripts (and because of that some words in some languages) are
   written not left to right, but right to left.  And, to complicate
   things, one might have something written in Arabic characters right
   to left that includes some characters in Latin characters, such as
   European-style digits.  The Latin character part is written left to
   right, which implies some texts might have a mixed left to right AND
   right to left order (even though in most implementations all texts
   have a major direction, with the other as an exception).  IDNA
   prohibits these mixed-directional (or bidirectional) strings in IDN
   labels, but the prohibition causes other problems such as the
   rejection of some otherwise linguistically and culturally sensible
   strings.  As Unicode and conventions for handling so-called
   bidirectional ("BIDI") strings evolve, the prohibition in IDNA should
   be reviewed and reevaluated.

2.2.6.  Confusable Character Issues

   Similar-looking characters in identifiers can cause actual problems
   on the Internet since they can result, deliberately or accidentally,
   in people being directed to the wrong host or mailbox by believing
   that they are typing, or clicking on, intended characters which are
   different from those that actually appear in the domain name or
   reference.  See Section 3.1.3 for further discussion of this issue.

   IDNs complicate these issues, not only by providing many additional
   characters that look sufficiently alike to be potentially confused,
   but by raising new policy questions.  For example, if a language can
   be written in two different scripts, is a label constructed from a
   word written in one script equivalent to a label constructed from the
   same word written in the other script?  Is the answer the same for
   words in two different languages that translate into each other?

   It is now generally understood that, in addition to the collision
   problems of possibly equivalent words and hence labels, it is
   possible to utilize characters that look alike -- "confusable"
   characters -- to spoof names in order to mislead or defraud users.
   That issue, driven by particular attacks such as those known as
   "phishing", has introduced stronger requirements for registry efforts
   to prevent problems than were previously generally recognized as
   important.

   One commonly-proposed approach is to have a registry establish



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   restrictions on the characters, and combinations of characters, it
   will permit to be included in a string to be registered as a label.
   Taking the Swedish top-level domain, .SE, as an example, a rule might
   be adopted that the registry "only accepts registrations in Swedish,
   using Roman script, and because of this, Unicode characters Latin-a,
   -b, -c,...".  But, because there is not a 1:1 mapping between country
   and language, even a ccTLD like .SE might have to accept
   registrations in other languages.  For example, there may be a
   requirement for Finnish (the second most-used language in Sweden).
   What rules and codepoints are then defined for Finnish?  Does it have
   special mappings that collide with those that are defined for
   Swedish?  And what does one do in countries that use more than one
   script?  (Finnish and Swedish use the same script.)  In all cases,
   the dispute will ultimately be about whether two strings are the same
   (or confusingly similar) or not.  That, in turn, will generate a
   discussion of how one defines "what is the same" and "what is similar
   enough to be a problem".

   These difficulties can never be completely eliminated by algorithmic
   means.  Some of the problem can be addressed by appropriate tuning of
   the protocols and their tables, other parts by registry actions to
   reduce confusion and conflicts, and still other parts can be
   addressed by careful design of user interfaces in application
   programs.  But, ultimately, some responsibility to avoid being
   tricked or harmfully confused will rest with the user.

   Another registry technique that has been extensively explored
   involves looking at confusable characters and confusion between
   complete labels, restricting the labels that can be registered based
   on relationships to what is registered already.  Registries that
   adopt this approach might establish special mapping rules such as:

   1.  If you register something with codepoint A, domain names with B
       instead of A will be blocked from registration by others.
   2.  If you register something with codepoint A, you also get domain
       name with B instead of A.

   These approaches are discussed in more detail for "CJK" characters in
   RFC 3743 [RFC3743] and more generally in RFC 4290 [RFC4290].

2.2.7.  The IESG Statement and IDNA issues

   The issues above, at least as they were understood at the time,
   provided the background for the IESG statement included in
   Section 1.5.1 which, in turn, was part of the basis for the initial
   ICANN Guidelines) that a registry should have a policy about the
   scripts, languages, codepoints and text directions for which
   registrations will be accepted.  While "accept all" might be an



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   acceptable policy, it implies there is also a dispute resolution
   process that takes the problems listed above into account.  The
   dispute resolution process must be designed so that all types of
   potential disputes must be able to be resolved: for example, issues
   might arise between registrant and registry over a decision by the
   registry on collisions with already registered domain names and
   between registrant and trade mark holder (that a domain name
   infringes on a trademark).  In both cases the parties disagreeing
   have different views on whether two strings are "equivalent" or not.
   They may believe that a string that is not allowed to be registered
   is actually different from one that is already registered.  Or they
   might believe that two strings are the same, even though the rules
   adopted by the registry to prevent confusion define them as two
   different domain names.

2.2.8.  Versions of Unicode

   While opinions differ about how important the issues are in practice,
   the use of Unicode and its supporting tables to support IDNs appears
   to be far more sensitive to subtle changes than typical Unicode
   applications.  This may be, at least in part, because many other
   applications are internally sensitive only to the appearance of
   characters and not to their representation.  Or those applications
   may be able to take effective advantage of script, language, or
   character class identification.  The working group that developed
   IDNA concluded that attempting to encode any ancillary character
   information into the DNS label would be impractical and unwise, and
   the IAB, based in part on the comments in the ad hoc committee, saw
   no reason to review that decision.

   This sensitivity to changes has made it quite difficult to migrate
   IDNA from one version of Unicode to the next if any changes are made
   that are not strictly additive.  A change in a code point assignment
   or definition may be extremely disruptive if DNS labels have been
   defined using the earlier form.  Unicode normalization tables, tables
   of scripts or languages and characters that belong to them, and even
   tables of confusable characters as an adjunct to security
   recommendations may be very helpful in designing registry
   restrictions on registrations and applications provisions for
   avoiding or identifying suspicious names.  Ironically, they also
   extend the sensitivity of IDNA and its implementations to all forms
   of change between one version of Unicode and the next.  Consequently,
   they make Unicode version migration more difficult.

   An example of the type of change that appears to be just a small
   correction from one perspective but may be problematic from another
   was the correction to the normalization definition in 2004 [Unicode-
   PR29].  There was community input that the change would cause



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   problems for Stringprep, but UTC decided, on balance, that the change
   was worthwhile.  Because of difficulties with consistency, some
   deployed implementations have decided to adopt the change and others
   have not, leading to subtle incompatibilities.

   This situation leads to a dilemma.  On the one hand, it is completely
   unacceptable to freeze Unicode at a version level that excludes more
   recently-defined characters and scripts which are important to those
   who use them.  On the other hand, it is equally unacceptable to
   migrate from one version of Unicode to the next if such migration
   might invalidate an existing registered DNS name or some of its
   registered properties or might make the string or representation of
   that name ambiguous.  If IDNA is to be modified to accommodate new
   versions of Unicode, the IETF will need to work with the Unicode
   Consortium and other relevant bodies to find an appropriate balance
   in this area, but progress will be possible only if all relevant
   parties are able to fairly consider and discuss possible decisions
   that may be very difficult and unpalatable.


3.  Framework for next steps in IDN development

3.1.  Issues within the scope of the IETF

3.1.1.  Review of IDNA

   The IETF should consider reviewing RFCs 3454, 3490, 3491 and/or 3492,
   and update, replace or supplement them to meet the criteria of this
   paragraph (one or more of them may prove impractical after further
   study).  Any new versions or additional specifications should be
   adapted to the version of Unicode that is current when they are
   created.  Ideally, they should specify a path for adapting to future
   versions of Unicode (some suggestions below may facilitate this).
   The IETF should also consider whether there are significant
   advantages to mapping some groups of characters, such as code points
   assigned to font variations, into others or whether clarity and
   comprehensibility for the user would be better served by simply
   prohibiting those characters.  More generally, it appears that it
   would be worthwhile for the IETF to review whether the Unicode
   normalization rules now invoked by the Stringprep profile in Nameprep
   are optimal for the DNS or whether more restrictive rules, or an even
   more restrictive set of permitted character combinations, would
   provide better support for DNS internationalization.

   The IAB has concluded that there is a consensus within the broader
   community that lists of codepoints should be specified by the use of
   an inclusion based mechanism (i.e., identifying the characters that
   are permitted), rather than by excluding a small number of characters



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   from the total Unicode set as Stringprep and Nameprep do today.  That
   conclusion should be reviewed by the IETF community and action taken
   as appropriate.

   We suggest that the individuals doing the review of the codepoints
   should work as a specialized design team.  To the extent possible,
   that work should be done jointly by people with experience from the
   IETF and deep knowledge of the constraints of the DNS and application
   design, participants from the Unicode Consortium, and other people
   necessary to be able to reach a generally-accepted result.  Because
   any work along these lines would be modifications and updates to
   standards-track documents, final review and approval of any proposals
   would necesarily follow normal IETF processes.

   It is worth noting that sufficiently extreme changes to IDNA would
   require a new Punycode prefix, probably with long-term support for
   both the old prefix or the new one in both registration arrangements
   and applications.  An alternative, which is almost certainly
   impractical, would be some sort of "flag day", i.e., a date on which
   the old rules are simultaneously abandoned by everyone and the new
   ones adopted.  However, preliminary analysis indicates that few, if
   any, of the changes recommended for consideration elsewhere in this
   document would require this type of version change.  For example,
   additional restrictions on what can be registered may require policy
   decisions about actions to be taken with regard to labels that
   conformed to earlier rules but not to new ones, but not changes in
   the protocol or prefix.

3.1.2.  Non-DNS and Above-DNS Internationalization Approaches

   The IETF should once again examine the extent to which it is
   appropriate to try to solve internationalization problems via the DNS
   and what place the many varieties of so-called "keyword systems" or
   other Internet navigational techniques might have.  Those techniques
   can be designed to impose fewer constraints, or at least different
   constraints, than IDNA and the DNS.  As discussed elsewhere in this
   document, IDNA cannot support information about scripts, languages,
   or Unicode versions on lookup.  As a consequence of the nature of DNS
   lookups, characters and labels either match or do not match; a near-
   match is simply not a possible concept in the DNS.  By contrast,
   observation of near-matching is common in human communication and in
   matching operations performed by people, especially when they have a
   particular script or language context in mind.  The DNS is further
   constrained by a fairly rigid internal aliasing system (via CNAME and
   DNAME resource records), while some applications of international
   naming may require more flexibility.  Finally, the rigid hierarchy of
   the DNS --and the tendency in practice for it to become flat at
   levels nearest the root-- and the need for names to be unique are



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   more suitable for some purposes than others and may not be a good
   match for some purposes for which people wish to use IDNs.  Each of
   these constraints can be relaxed or changed by one or more systems
   that would provide alternatives to direct use of the DNS by users.
   Some of the issues involved are discussed further in Section 4.4 and
   various ideas have been discussed in detail in the IETF or IRTF.
   Many of those ideas have even been described in Internet Drafts or
   other documents.  As experience with IDNs and with expectations for
   them accumulates, it will probably become appropriate for the IETF or
   IRTF to revisit the underlying questions and possibilities.

3.1.3.  Security issues, certificates, etc.

   Some characters look like others, often as the result of common
   origins.  The problem with these "confusable" characters, often
   incorrectly called homographs, has always existed when characters are
   presented to humans that interpret what is displayed and then make
   decisions based on what the person sees.  This is not a problem that
   exists only when working with internationalized domain names, but it
   makes the problem worse.  The result of a survey that would explain
   what the problems are might be interesting.  Many of these issues are
   mentioned in Unicode Technical Report #36 [UTR36].

   In this and other issues associated with IDNs, precise use of
   terminology is important lest even more confusion result.  The
   definition of the term 'homograph' that normally appears in
   dictionaries and linguistic texts states that homographs are
   different words which are spelled identically (for example, the
   adjective 'brief' meaning short, the noun 'brief' meaning a document,
   and the verb 'brief' meaning to inform).  By definition, letters in
   two different alphabets are not the same, regardless of similarities
   in appearance.  This means that sequences of letters from two
   different scripts that appear to be identical on a computer display
   cannot be homographs in the accepted sense, even if they are both
   words in the dictionary of some language.  Assuming that there is a
   language written with Cyrillic script in which "cap" is a word,
   regardless of what it might mean, it is not a homograph of the Latin-
   script English word "cap".

   When the security implications of visually confusable characters were
   brought to the forefront in 2005, the term homograph was used to
   designate any instance of graphic similarity, even when comparing
   individual characters.  This usage is not only incorrect, but risks
   introducing even more confusion and hence should be avoided.  The
   current preferred terminology is to describe these similar-looking
   characters as "confusable characters" or even "confusables".

   Many people have suggested that confusable characters are a problem



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   that must be addressed, at least in part, as part of the user
   interfaces of application software.  While it should almost certainly
   be part of a complete solution, that approach creates it own set of
   difficulties.  For example, a user switching between systems, or even
   between applications on the same system, may be surprised by
   different types of behavior and different levels of protection.  In
   addition, it is unclear how a secure setup for the end user should be
   designed.  Today, in the web browser, a padlock is a traditional way
   of describing some level of security for the end user.  Is this
   binary signaling enough?  Should there be any connection between a
   risk for a displayed string including confusable characters and the
   padlock or similar signaling to the user?

   Many web browsers have adopted the convention, based on a "whitelist"
   or similar techniques, that IDNs within top-level domains that are
   deemed to practice safe practices about registration of confusable
   labels are displayed as native characters, while IDNs from other
   domains are displayed as Punycode.  These techniques clearly are not
   sensitive to different policies between top-level domains and their
   subdomains and, while clearly helpful, may not be adequate.  Are
   other methods of dealing with confusable characters possible?  Would
   other methods of identifying and listing policies about avoiding
   confusing registrations be feasible and helpful?

   It would be interesting to see a more coordinated effort to have
   guidelines in the form of user interface guidelines.

3.1.4.  Non US-ASCII in local part of email addresses

   Work is going on in the IETF related to the local part of email
   addresses.  It should be noted that the local part of email addresses
   has much different syntax and constraints than a domain name label,
   so to directly apply IDNA on the local part is not possible.

3.1.5.  Use of the Unicode Character Set in the IETF

   Unicode, and the closely-related ISO 10646, are the only coded
   character set that aspires to include all of the world's characters.
   As such, they permit use of international characters without having
   to identify particular character coding standards or tables.  The
   requirement for a single character set is particularly important for
   use with the DNS since there is no place to put character set
   identification.  The decision to use Unicode as the base for IETF
   protocols going forward is discussed in [RFC2277].  The IAB does not
   see any reason to revisit the decision to use Unicode in IETF
   protocols.





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3.2.  Issues that fall within the purview of ICANN

3.2.1.  Dispute resolution

   IDN creates new types of collisions between trademarks and domain
   names as well as collisions between domain names.  These have impact
   on dispute resolution processes used by registries and otherwise.  It
   is important that deployment of IDN evolve in parallel with review
   and updating of ICANN or registry-specific dispute resolution
   processes.

3.2.2.  Policy at registries

   The IAB recommends that registries use an inclusion based model when
   choosing what characters to allow at the time of registration.  This
   list of characters is in turn to be a subset of what is allowed
   according to the updated IDNA standard.  The IAB further recommends
   that registries develop their inclusion based models in parallel with
   dispute resolution process at the registry itself.

   Most established policies for dealing with claimed or apparent
   confusion or conflicts of names are based on "dispute resolution".
   Decisions about legitimate use or registration of one or more names
   are resolved at or after the time of registration on a case-by-case
   basis and using policies that are specific to the particular DNS zone
   or jurisdiction involved.  These policies have generally not been
   extended below the level of the DNS that is directly controlled by
   the top-level registry.

   Because of the much larger number of conflicts that can be generated
   by the larger number of available and confusable characters in
   Unicode, we recommend that registration-restriction and dispute
   resolution policies be developed to constrain IDN registrations by
   registries and zone administrators at all levels of the DNS tree.  Of
   course, many of these policies will be less formal than others and
   there is no requirement for complete global consistency, but the
   arguments for reduction of confusable characters and other issues in
   TLDs should apply to all zones below that specific TLD.

   Consistency across all zones can obviously only be accomplished by
   changes to the protocols.  Such changes should be considered by the
   IETF if particular restrictions are identified that are important and
   consistent enough to be applied globally.

   Policy changes that would not permit existing, registered, names to
   be registered under the newer rules should be considered carefully,
   balancing their importance against possible disruption and the issues
   of invalidating older names against the importance of consistency as



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   seen by the user.

3.2.3.  IDN TLDs

   The IAB has concluded that there is not one IDN TLD issue but at
   least three very separate ones:

   o  Assuming there are to be IDN entries in the root zone at all, a
      decision must be made as to what TLDs are to be created and how
      they are to be named.  This decision falls within the traditional
      IANA scope and is an ICANN issue today.
   o  There has been discussion of permitting some or all existing TLDs
      to be referenced by multiple labels, with those labels presumably
      representing some understanding of the "name" of the TLD in
      different languages.  If actual aliases of this type are desired
      for existing domains, the IETF may need to consider whether the
      use of DNAME records in the root is appropriate to meet that need,
      what constraints, if any, are needed, whether alternate
      approaches, such as those of [RFC4185], are appropriate or whether
      further alternatives should be investigated.  But, to the extent
      to which aliases are considered desirable and feasible, decisions
      presumably must be made as to which, if any, root IDN labels
      should be associated with DNAME records and which ones should be
      handled by normal delegation records or other mechanisms.  That
      decision is one of DNS root-level namespace policy and hence falls
      to ICANN although we would expect ICANN to pay careful attention
      to any technical, operational, or security recommendations that
      may be produced by other bodies.
   o  Finally, if IDN labels are to be placed in the root zone, there
      are issues associated with how they are to be encoded and
      deployed.  This area may have implications for work that has been
      done, or should be done, in the IETF.


4.  Specific Recommendations for Next Steps

   Consistent with the framework described above, the IAB offers these
   recommendations as steps for further consideration in the identified
   groups.

4.1.  Reduction of permitted character list

   Generalize from the original "hostname" rules to non-ASCII
   characters, permitting as few characters as possible to do that job.
   This would represent a restriction of the model of characters
   permitted in IDN labels, and it contrasts with the approach used to
   develop the original IDNA/Nameprep tables: that approach was to
   include all Unicode characters that there was not a clear reason to



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   exclude.

   The specific recommendation here is to specify such internationalized
   hostnames.  Such an activity would fall to the IETF, although the
   task of developing the appropriate list of permitted characters will
   require effort both in the IETF and elsewhere.  The effort should be
   as linguistically and culturally sensitive as possible, but smooth
   and effective operation of the DNS, including minimizing of
   complexity, should be primary goals.  The following should be
   considered as possible mechanisms for achieving an appropriate
   minimum number of characters.

4.1.1.  Elimination of all non-language characters

   Unicode characters that are not needed to write words or numbers in
   any of the world's languages should be eliminated from the list of
   characters that are appropriate in DNS labels.  In addition to such
   characters as those used for box-drawing and sentence punctuation,
   this should exclude punctuation for word structure and other
   delimiters: while DNS labels may conveniently be used to express
   words in many circumstances, the goal is not to express words (or
   sentences or phrases), but to permit the creation of unambiguous
   labels with good mnemonic value.

4.1.2.  Elimination of word-separation punctuation

   The inclusion of the hyphen in the original hostname rules is a
   historical artifact from an older, flat, name space.  The community
   should consider whether it is appropriate to treat it as a simple
   legacy property of ASCII names and not attempt to generalize it to
   other scripts.  We might, for example, not permit claimed equivalents
   to the hyphen from other scripts to be used in IDNs.  We might even
   consider banning use of the hyphen itself in non-ASCII strings or,
   less restrictively, strings that contained non-Roman characters.

4.2.  Updating to new versions of Unicode

   As new scripts, to support new languages, continue to be added to
   Unicode, it is important that IDNA track updates.  If it does not do
   so, but remains "stuck" at 3.2 or some single later version, it will
   not be possible to include labels in the DNS that are derived from
   words in languages that require characters that are available only in
   later versions.  Making those upgrades is difficult, and will
   continue to be difficult, as long as new versions require, not just
   addition of characters, but changes to canonicalization conventions,
   normalization tables, or matching procedures (see Section 2.2.8).
   Anything that can be done to lower complexity and simplify forward
   transitions should be seriously considered.



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4.3.  Combining Characters and Character Components

   One thing that increases IDNA complexity and the need for
   normalization is that combining characters are permitted.  Without
   them, complexity might be reduced enough to permit more easy
   transitions to new versions.  The community should consider whether
   combining characters should be prohibited entirely from IDNs.  A
   consequence of this, of course, is that each new language or script,
   and several existing ones, would require that all of its characters
   have Unicode assignments to specific, precomposed, code points.

   Note that this is not currently permitted within Unicode for Roman-
   based scripts.  For non-Roman scripts, some such code points have
   been defined.  The decisions that govern the assignment of such code
   points are managed entirely within the Unicode Consortium.  Were the
   IETF to choose to reduce IDNA complexity by excluding combining
   characters, no doubt there would be additional input to the Unicode
   Consortium from users and proponents of scripts requiring composing
   characters.  The IAB and the IETF should examine whether it is
   appropriate to press the Unicode Consortium to revise these policies
   or otherwise to recommend actions that would reduce the need for
   normalization and the related complexities.  However, we have been
   told that the Technical Committee does not believe it is reasonable
   or feasible to add all possible precomposed characters to Unicode.
   If Unicode cannot be modified to contain the precomposed characters
   necessary to support existing languages and scripts, much less new
   ones, this option for IDN restrictions will not be feasible.

   Retaining combining characters without further global restrictions
   may leave us "stuck" at Unicode 3.2, leading either to
   incompatibility differences in applications that otherwise use a
   modern version of Unicode (while IDN remains at Unicode 3.2) or to
   painful transitions to new versions.

4.4.  Role and Uses of the DNS

   We wish to remind the community that there are boundaries to the
   appropriate uses of the DNS.  It was designed and implemented to
   serve some specific purposes.  There are additional things that it
   does well, other things that it does badly, and still other things it
   cannot do at all.  No amount of protocol work on IDNs will solve
   problems with alternate spellings, near-matches, searching for
   appropriate names, and so on.  Registration restrictions and
   carefully-designed user interfaces can be used to reduce the risk and
   pain of attempts to do some of these things gone wrong, as well as
   reducing the risks of various sort of deliberate bad behavior, but,
   beyond a certain point, use of the DNS simply because it is available
   becomes a bad tradeoff.  The tradeoff may be particularly unfortunate



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   when the use of IDNs does not actually solve the proposed problem.
   For example, internationalization of DNS names does not eliminate the
   ASCII protocol identifiers and structure of URIs [RFC3986] and even
   IRIs [RFC3987].  Hence, DNS internationalization itself, at any or
   all levels of the DNS tree, is not a sufficient response to the
   desire of populations to use the Internet entirely in their own
   languages and the characters associated with those languages.

   These issues are discussed at more length, and alternatives
   presented, in [RFC2825], [RFC3467], [INDNS], and [DNS-Choices].

4.5.  Databases of Registered Names

   In addition to their presence in the DNS, IDNs introduce issues in
   other contexts in which domain names are used.  In particular, the
   design and content of databases that bind registered names to
   information about the registrant (commonly described as "whois"
   databases) will require review and updating.  For example, the whois
   protocol itself [RFC3912] is ASCII-only: with a conforming
   implementation of the Whois protocol, one cannot search for, or
   report, either a DNS name or contact information that is not in ASCII
   characters .  This may provide some additional impetus for a switch
   to IRIS [RFC3981] [RFC3982] but also raises a number of other
   questions about what information, and in what languages and scripts,
   should be included or permitted in such databases.


5.  Security Considerations

   This document is simply a discussion of IDNs and IDN issues; it
   raises no new security concerns.  However, if some of its
   recommendations to reduce IDNA complexity, the number of available
   characters, and various approaches to constraining the use of
   confusable characters, are followed and prove successful, the risks
   of name spoofing and other problems may be reduced.


6.  Acknowledgments

   The contributions to this report from members of the IAB-IDN ad hoc
   committee are gratefully acknowledged.  Of course, not all of the
   members of that group endorse every comment and suggestion of this
   report.  In particular, this report does not claim to reflect the
   views of the Unicode Consortium as a whole or those of particular
   participants in the work of that Consortium.  The members of the ad
   hoc committee were:

   Rob Austein, Leslie Daigle, Tina Dam, Mark Davis, Patrik Faltstrom,



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   Scott Hollenbeck, Cary Karp, John Klensin, Gervase Markham, David
   Meyer, Thomas Narten, Michael Suignard, Sam Weiler, Bert Wijnen, Kurt
   Zeilenga and Lixia Zhang.

   Special thanks are due to Cary Karp and Tina Dam for contributions of
   considerable specific text, to Marcos Sanz and Paul Hoffman for
   careful late-stage reading and extensive comments, and to Pete
   Resnick for many contributions and comments, both in conjunction with
   his former IAB service and subsequently.

   Members of the IAB at the time of approval of this document were:
   [[anchor39: To be supplied]]


7.  Change History

   [[anchor41: RFC Editor: this section is to be removed before
   publication]]

7.1.  Changes for version -01

   1.  Added discussion and reference to Unicode PR-29
   2.  Replaced the discussion of the ICANN Guidelines (with thanks to
       Tina Dam and Cary Karp).
   3.  Revised the Bidi text to make the potential recommendation more
       clear.
   4.  Removed any claims (actual or implied) of endorsement by the
       members of the ad hoc committee.
   5.  Several small editorial changes, etc.

7.2.  Changes for version -02

   1.  Added some additional references, e.g., to W3C
       internationalization work and to UTR39.
   2.  Adjusted some terminology to correct errors and avoid unnecessary
       controversy.
   3.  Extended the discussion of related characters in Swedish and
       Norwegian to clarify at least one of the possibilities
   4.  Introduced new Section 4.5 to discuss IDN issues in other than
       the DNS itself and point to IRIS.
   5.  Rewrote the introduction to the "problem" section and its first
       subsection.
   6.  Small changes made to the "definitions" section including
       explaining why "multilingual" is there and rewriting the "script"
       definition to clarify slightly and put the example script names
       into alphabetical order.





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   7.  Section 3.2.3, has been fairly extensively rewritten for clarity,
       and a large number of less extensive clarifications have been
       made, although no substantive changes have been (intentionally)
       occurred.

7.3.  Changes for Version -03

   1.  Made a number of further tuning changes to better reflect the
       role of the document and corrected several references.
   2.  Removed the reference to Vietnamese.
   3.  Added a discussion of IDNA versioning and new prefixes.

7.4.  Changes for version -04

   1.  Corrected many small typographical and editorial errors.
   2.  Clarified that elimination of non-language characters was not
       intended to eliminate digits.

7.5.  Changes for version -05

   1.  Revised section 4.3 to further clarify the suggestion.
   2.  Revised the Acknowledgments section


8.  References

8.1.  Normative References

   [ISO10646]
              International Organization for Standardization,
              "Information Technology - Universal Multiple- Octet Coded
              Character Set (UCS) - Part 1: Architecture and Basic
              Multilingual Plane"", ISO/IEC 10646-1:2000, October 2000.

   [RFC3454]  Hoffman, P. and M. Blanchet, "Preparation of
              Internationalized Strings ("stringprep")", RFC 3454,
              December 2002.

   [RFC3490]  Faltstrom, P., Hoffman, P., and A. Costello,
              "Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA)",
              RFC 3490, March 2003.

   [RFC3491]  Hoffman, P. and M. Blanchet, "Nameprep: A Stringprep
              Profile for Internationalized Domain Names (IDN)",
              RFC 3491, March 2003.

   [RFC3492]  Costello, A., "Punycode: A Bootstring encoding of Unicode
              for Internationalized Domain Names in Applications



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              (IDNA)", RFC 3492, March 2003.

   [Unicode32]
              The Unicode Consortium, "The Unicode Standard, Version
              3.0", 2000.

              (Reading, MA, Addison-Wesley, 2000.  ISBN 0-201-61633-5).
              Version 3.2 consists of the definition in that book as
              amended by the Unicode Standard Annex #27: Unicode 3.1
              (http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr27/) and by the Unicode
              Standard Annex #28: Unicode 3.2
              (http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr28/).

8.2.  Informative References

   [DNS-Choices]
              Faltstrom, P., "Design Choices When Expanding DNS",
              draft-iab-dns-choices-02 (work in progress), June 2005.

   [ICANNv1]  ICANN, "Guidelines for the Implementation of
              Internationalized Domain Names, Version 1.0", March 2003,
              <http://www.icann.org/general/idn-guidelines-20jun03.htm>.

   [ICANNv2]  ICANN, "Guidelines for the Implementation of
              Internationalized Domain Names, Version 2.0",
              November 2005,
              <http://www.icann.org/general/idn-guidelines-20sep05.htm>.

   [IESG-IDN]
              Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG), "IESG
              Statement on IDN", IESG Statements IDN Statement,
              February 2003,
              <http://www.ietf.org/IESG/STATEMENTS/IDNstatement.txt>.

   [INDNS]    National Research Council, "Signposts in Cyberspace: The
              Domain Name System and Internet Navigation", National
              Academy Press ISBN 0309-09640-5 (Book) 0309-54979-5 (PDF),
              2005,
              <http://www7.nationalacademies.org/cstb/pub_dns.html>.

   [ISO.2022.1986]
              International Organization for Standardization,
              "Information Processing: ISO 7-bit and 8-bit coded
              character sets: Code extension techniques", ISO Standard
              2022, 1986.

   [ISO.646.1991]
              International Organization for Standardization,



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              "Information technology - ISO 7-bit coded character set
              for information interchange", ISO Standard 646, 1991.

   [ISO.8859.2003]
              International Organization for Standardization,
              "Information processing - 8-bit single-byte coded graphic
              character sets - Part 1: Latin alphabet No. 1 (1998) -
              Part 2: Latin alphabet No. 2 (1999) - Part 3: Latin
              alphabet No. 3 (1999) - Part 4: Latin alphabet No. 4
              (1998) - Part 5: Latin/Cyrillic alphabet (1999) - Part 6:
              Latin/Arabic alphabet (1999) - Part 7: Latin/Greek
              alphabet (2003) - Part 8: Latin/Hebrew alphabet (1999) -
              Part 9: Latin alphabet No. 5 (1999) - Part 10: Latin
              alphabet No. 6 (1998) - Part 11: Latin/Thai alphabet
              (2001) - Part 13: Latin alphabet No. 7 (1998) - Part 14:
              Latin alphabet No. 8 (Celtic) (1998) - Part 15: Latin
              alphabet No. 9 (1999) - Part 16: Part 16: Latin alphabet
              No. 10 (2001)", ISO Standard 8859, 2003.

   [RFC2277]  Alvestrand, H., "IETF Policy on Character Sets and
              Languages", BCP 18, RFC 2277, January 1998.

   [RFC2825]  IAB and L. Daigle, "A Tangled Web: Issues of I18N, Domain
              Names, and the Other Internet protocols", RFC 2825,
              May 2000.

   [RFC3066]  Alvestrand, H., "Tags for the Identification of
              Languages", BCP 47, RFC 3066, January 2001.

   [RFC3467]  Klensin, J., "Role of the Domain Name System (DNS)",
              RFC 3467, February 2003.

   [RFC3536]  Hoffman, P., "Terminology Used in Internationalization in
              the IETF", RFC 3536, May 2003.

   [RFC3743]  Konishi, K., Huang, K., Qian, H., and Y. Ko, "Joint
              Engineering Team (JET) Guidelines for Internationalized
              Domain Names (IDN) Registration and Administration for
              Chinese, Japanese, and Korean", RFC 3743, April 2004.

   [RFC3912]  Daigle, L., "WHOIS Protocol Specification", RFC 3912,
              September 2004.

   [RFC3981]  Newton, A. and M. Sanz, "IRIS: The Internet Registry
              Information Service (IRIS) Core Protocol", RFC 3981,
              January 2005.

   [RFC3982]  Newton, A. and M. Sanz, "IRIS: A Domain Registry (dreg)



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              Type for the Internet Registry Information Service
              (IRIS)", RFC 3982, January 2005.

   [RFC3986]  Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and L. Masinter, "Uniform
              Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax", STD 66,
              RFC 3986, January 2005.

   [RFC3987]  Duerst, M. and M. Suignard, "Internationalized Resource
              Identifiers (IRIs)", RFC 3987, January 2005.

   [RFC4185]  Klensin, J., "National and Local Characters for DNS Top
              Level Domain (TLD) Names", RFC 4185, October 2005.

   [RFC4290]  Klensin, J., "Suggested Practices for Registration of
              Internationalized Domain Names (IDN)", RFC 4290,
              December 2005.

   [UTR]      Unicode Consortium, "Unicode Technical Reports",
              <http://www.unicode.org/reports/>.

   [UTR36]    Davis, M. and M. Suignard, "Unicode Technical Report #36:
              Unicode Security Considerations", November 2005,
              <http://www.unicode.org/draft/reports/tr36/tr36.html>.

              Working Draft for Proposed Update

   [UTR39]    Davis, M. and M. Suignard, "Unicode Technical Standard #39
              (proposed): Unicode Security Considerations", July 2005,
              <http://www.unicode.org/draft/reports/tr39/tr39.html>.

              Working Draft for Proposed Draft

   [Unicode-PR29]
              The Unicode Consortium, "Public Review Issue #29:
              Normalization Issue", Unicode PR 29, February 2004.

   [Unicode10]
              The Unicode Consortium, "The Unicode Standard, Version
              1.0", 1991.

   [W3C-Localization]
              Ishida, R. and S. Miller, "Localization vs.
              Internationalization", W3C International/questions/
              qa-i18n.txt, December 2005.

   [ltru-initial]
              Ewell, D., Ed., "Initial Language Subtag Registry",
              draft-ietf-ltru-initial-06 (work in progress),



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              February 2004.

              This document is awaiting publication as an Informational
              RFC.

   [ltru-registry]
              Phillips, A., Ed. and M. Davis, Ed., "Tags for Identifying
              Languages", draft-ietf-ltru-registry-14 (work in
              progress), October 2004.

              This document has been approved as a Proposed Standard and
              is awaiting publication as an RFC.







































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Authors' Addresses

   John C Klensin
   1770 Massachusetts Ave, #322
   Cambridge, MA  02140
   USA

   Phone: +1 617 491 5735
   Email: john-ietf@jck.com


   Patrik Faltstrom
   IAB

   Email: paf@cisco.com




































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