Re: Extended Characters in Server Names

As Thierry hinted, ability to register does not equal ability to use.

The actual DNS issue is very complex although here are some working groups 
trying to hash it out. Getting everybody to upgrade there DNS to support 
this is asking a lot, since people don't upgrade their DNS servers often 
even now.

Not only that, but as far as I know,  whatever registrations there are are:

1 - first level domains, not TLD. So you won't see www.[sony].[nihon] (in 
Kanji)
2 - not guaranteed to ever be available (although they will be happy to 
take 35 dollars per year per name until then :)

It is not just DNS that is involved, but other protocols that deal with 
domain names that will need updating. SMTP (email), HTTP (web) all are 
going to break if left as is.

Aside from the technical questions, ICANN (which holds the key to all of 
this) is probably the most politicized area of internet governance.

I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for any of this to really happen on a big 
scale.

OTOH, all of this refers to TCP/IP based networks. If you are using some 
other system (on a lan perhaps?) then depending on the OS capabilities, you 
may already be able to give hosts multibyte/Unicode names. I don't really 
have any details on that because I haven't seen such a network for a long time.

Barry Caplan
www.i18n.com

At 05:47 PM 8/10/2001 +0200, Thierry Sourbier wrote:
>Guy,
>
>It is now possible to register domain names in nearly every language. The
>standard for communication is to use UTF-8 as a common encoding for URIs
>(thus avoiding the all characters encodings mess :).
>
>If the registration is possible and the standards defined, I do not know if
>international domain names are currently supported by all the DNS and
>servers.
>
>A couple of URLs (in US-ASCII :) worth checking out:
>http://www.i-d-n.net/
>http://ml.register.com/
>
>Cheers,
>Thierry Sourbier
>www.i18ngurus.com
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Lacoursiere, Guy" <Guy.Lacoursiere@Cognos.COM>
>To: <www-international@w3.org>
>Sent: Friday, August 10, 2001 4:24 PM
>Subject: Extended Characters in Server Names
>
>
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I'd like to know whether it is possible in Europe and Asia to create
>server
> > names in their own character set (using extended 8-bit or multibyte
> > characters) or do server names always have to be in US-ASCII characters
> > only?
> >
> > Do all operating systems allow the use of extended characters in server
> > names?  Even if they do, are people actually doing that?  If different
> > servers on a network have names in different character sets, how does it
> > work?
> >
> > I'd appreciate any input on this.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Guy Lacoursiere
> > Cognos Incorporated
> >
> >

Received on Friday, 10 August 2001 12:14:54 UTC