RE: [council] Question to VeriSign re IDN deployment in the Root

["Cochetti, Roger" <RCochetti@verisign.com>]

Elisabeth-

In accordance with plans published beginning in late 2000, VeriSign Global
Registry Services (VGRS) has prepared to place an ACE version of the
Internationalized Domain Names for com/net and org into the zone files
operated by VGRS.  This particular milestone in the plan was to be achieved
in June of this year with the placement of a RACE version of the com/net/org
IDNs into the zone files.

In June of this year, it became apparent that RACE was no longer the
preferred ACE as there were compression issues in the algorithm such that
some AP character sets could only encode a maximum of sixteen characters.
So, at the request of both ICANN and the IETF, VGRS postponed these plans
until a leading ACE was identified.  VGRS willingly complied and introduced
other means to resolve IDNs while the IDN Working Group continued to move
towards a consensus ACE.

At the London IETF meeting in August, AMC-ACE-Z was identified as the
leading candidate to be the ACE for IDNs.  In keeping with the progress of
the IETF, VGRS will be implementing Z into the zones between the end of
October and mid-November of 2001.  This deployment does not change the
current RACE registrations in the database so that ICANN accredited
registrars will not be required to modify their registration process prior
to the publishing of an ACE RFC. 

Should the IETF migrate to a subsequent ACE, VGRS will modify the zone files
accordingly.  It should also be noted that this step involves putting only
ASCII domain names in the zones so there will be no impact on the DNS.  We
have been very clear to date that work still needs to be done at the
application layer.  But it is helpful to recognize that it is quite unlikely
that the application layer work will be done until there is a demonstrated
demand for it.  In other words, browser manufacturers probably will not
change their browers until they see a demonstrated need.  Waiting is not too
big of an issue for those who speak latin based languages and use Roman
characters, but it is a much bigger issue for people from Asia and other
parts of the world where the ASCII character set does not correspond to
their own. 

As we have stated from the beginning, VeriSign GRS will not end the test bed
until such time that a standard is completed and at that time we will
conform to the standard.  In the meantime, we are conforming to the
standards process while at the same time responding to a demand by
non-English native speakers.

Hope this helps,

Roger

Roger J. Cochetti
Senior Vice President & Chief Policy Officer
VeriSign
rcochetti@verisign.com
202-973-6600


-----Original Message-----
From: Elisabeth Porteneuve [mailto:Elisabeth.Porteneuve@cetp.ipsl.fr]
Sent: Tuesday, October 09, 2001 2:27 PM
To: rcochetti@verisign.com
Cc: council@dnso.org; lynn@icann.org; mkatoh@wdc.fujitsu.com;
vcerf@mci.net
Subject: [council] Question to VeriSign re IDN deployment in the Root



Roger,

Would you clarify the following (see 5) VeriSign announcement 
concerning IDN names ?

VeriSign indicates that they will be putting ML (multi-lingual) names 
in the Root on the 27th October before the IETF has concluded its work.

The IETF IDN engineers determined twelve items to be defined on 
technical level before the ML domain names could be used with the 
Internet's existing end-to-end model and that preserve globally 
unique naming in a universally resolvable public name space. 
Whereas the first issue on encoding scheme (see 1) had only just been 
published as draft version, there are still many others awaiting 
technical developments. 
At an application level these active ML names have no chance 
of functioning, causing confusion and damaging the cultural 
aspects of ML domain names.

Elisabeth
--

References:

1. The IETF published on 4 Sep 2001 an Internet Draft (expiring 4 Mar 2002)
   http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-idn-amc-ace-z-01.txt

2. The IDN testbed authorization under .com given to VeriSign in 
   http://www.icann.org/minutes/minutes-25sep00.htm (... constructive 
   experimentation with extensions to the domain name system to support 
   multilingual names should be encouraged, provided it is done in a 
   manner consistent with promoting responsible standardization, it avoids 
   disrupting the stability of the Internet or the interoperability of 
   Internet services, and its experimental character is clearly 
   understood by all affected)

3. The NC resolution (Decision D2) in Stockholm
   http://www.dnso.org/dnso/notes/20010602.NCstockholm-minutes.html

4. The ML implications on the stability of the Internet or the 
   interoperability of Internet services became of utmost importance 
   to all stakeholders, including governments and the ICANN Board, 
   as shown in Montevideo resolutions 01.94 to 01.100, establishing 
   an IDN Committee as part of ICANN Corporation. Chaired by 
   Director Masanobu Katoh.
   http://www.icann.org/minutes/prelim-report-10sep01.htm

5. VeriSign announcement to convert its current RICE encoding 
   used at the testbed to AMC-ACE-Z, with deployment of zone 
   files from October 27th, 2001 through November 12th, 2001, 
   and making the testbed domain names active
   cf: http://www.dnso.org/clubpublic/registrars/Arc01/msg01279.html

-------Start of Quoted VeriSign ML announcement---------
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2001 14:10:00 -0400
From: VeriSign Global Registry Services <info@verisign-grs.com>
To: idntestbed@verisign-grs.com
Subject: [IDNList] Registrar Advisory: AMC-ACE- Z in the zones

To All IDN-Certified Registrars:

VeriSign Global Registry Services (GRS) intends to move forward in the
Internationalized Domain Name Testbed by placing the IDNs directly into
the .com, .net and .org zones.  The zones will be populated with the
AMC-ACE-Z v0.3.1 representation of the IDNs.  Registrars do not need to
modify any of their current registration processes to support this change.  
All existing IDNs originally registered with RACE will be valid under the
AMC-ACE-Z encoding.

Deployment will occur from October 27th, 2001 through November 12th,
2001. On October 27th, all existing registrations will have their associated
AMC-ACE-Z representation calculated and stored in the database along
with the current RACE representation.  The registration process will not
change:
all new registrations will still be received in RACE, but will now have
the AMC-ACE-Z component calculated and stored in the database.  Reports
will be available on a monthly basis showing a registrar's IDN registrations
in both RACE and AMC-ACE-Z representations. These reports will be posted 
to the Registrar FTP site.

Because this deployment will require a modification to the zone
generation process, there will be a two-week parallel operation period to
ensure that the zone files generated under the new process are equivalent 
to the files generated by the old zone process.

Upon completion of the parallel operation period, approximately
November 12th, 2001, VeriSign GRS will take all IDN registrations off of
Registry-Hold status and place them on Active status, which allows the
IDNs to be selected by the zone generation process.  This change from
Registry-Hold to Active status will be a background process and will
not require an outage of the SRS, though it will require a few days to
change all IDNs to Active status.  In addition, all new IDN registrations as
of that date will be placed on Active status.

The next step in the testbed will be the migration of all IDN-certified
Registrars to the new ACE standard for registration.  We do not
anticipate beginning this process until there is an RFC from the IETF
pertaining
to an ACE.  More information will be provided as it becomes available.  All
registrars will have ample time to prepare for this migration.

If you require additional information, please contact Customer Service
at info@verisign-grs.com.

Best Regards,

Chris Sheridan
Manager, Customer Service
VeriSign Global Registry Services
www.verisign-grs.com
info@verisign-grs.com
Customer Service
-------End of Quoted VeriSign ML announcement---------