Re: [registrars] REALNAMES - stopping service 30th June.

["Ross Wm. Rader" <ross@tucows.com>]

>
> I disagree. Open standards are good if they are ever set. You know as well
> as I do that the IETF has been dicking around with the IDN issue for
almost
> 2 years now.

Ketan,

A bit more to this point...

In 1981, the concept of "The Domain Name System" was put forth as a workable
way to address some very serious scale problems that the internet was
facing. Mills, in RFC 799 outlined the basic concepts that would not only
prevent a serious fragmentation of the internet, but also create a
predictable, stable and open foundation for future growth.

It wasn't until almost a full year later that RFC 819 was released. This
document set forth the basic concepts that would need to be explored and
started to put form to the ideas that Mills first introduced. DNS was
starting to take shape.

It took another full year for the seminal RFC's 881, 882 and 883 were
released - the final versions of these documents, RFC 1034 and 1035 were not
produced until 1987 - six years after Dr. Mills got his great idea - and
almost two full years after the DNS experiment started.

By your logic, the IETF still has another 4 years to "dick around" and get
things right before the community should start getting concerned.

Some wisdom to hold you over in the meantime...

"There is a problem in introducing internationalized domain names: a great
deal of software has to be changed. Some groups would like to start using
IDNs right away, and other groups don't want to see them or use them for a
very long time. Communication patterns are very complex and as soon as IDNs
are allowed and used by a few groups they will start showing up almost
everywhere. This argues that everyone should be prepared for them before
they are used at all. However, we know that with people being people and
with so many of people involved, the probability of everyone being ready in
any reasonable time period is nearly zero. The way out of this situation is
to set up a reasonable schedule for experimenting with IDNs and authorizing
their use. People that get ready on schedule should have no problems with
these names."

Jon Postel wrote this in 1983 - of course, he was talking about "domain
style names" and not IDNs, but his advice holds true in this area as well.
Of course, true to post-1991 Internet form, no one is listening.

My challenge to the IDN community is:

1) focus on getting the standard into the ground. The proprietary systems
are nice from an experimentation standpoint and might win one or two of you
some market share, but unless you all get together on this quickly, there
won't be much to fight over. My customers and their customers are quickly
losing patience.
2) once a standard is in the ground, determine what the schedule for
experimention, authorization and release should be - my customers, and
theirs, like predictability. Happy customers are profitable customers.
3) convince the rest of the community that this is a good idea and get the
job done. Ahh...the double-edged sword of consensus. Get used to it, like
brocolli, it is actually good for you.

As I mentioned previously, I get the sense that registrars are quickly
losing patience with anything but this type of a solution. If you want us to
keep buying your stuff, it might be a good idea to start listening. Lastly,
of course none of this is Neteka specific (only insofar as you've chosen to
involve them) - this only works if each of the IDN suppliers realizes the
errors of their current ways and starts to work towards something truly
lasting.

-rwr