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

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

Edmon, thanks for the thoughtful note.

> Neteka as a company provides a transition strategy for registries that is
> instrumental for a smooth migration towards a common multilingual
namespace.

You hit the nail on the head here. I don't doubt the sincerity of any of the
commitments made by the various IDN technology providers, especially yours
(despite the negative pall that registry specific implementations have cast
upon the players in the space). What I do have strong concern about is the
general capability to deliver on the transition plan over the long term.
Microsoft pulling the plug on Realnames shines a very bright light on the
capability of alternate naming systems (including IDN at this point) to
actually deliver on the promises that are necessarily made to consumers to
drive adoption. I am sure that Realnames had a very good transition strategy
to deal with CNRP, as I am sure that VRSN has/had a very good strategy to
migrate IDNs. And, were it not for the fact that we are discussing the
fabric of the Internet, this would be nothing more than an intellectual
exchange.

Perhaps I'm naive, but when I hear people like Klensin advocating a cautious
approach, advocating that the transition to a global IDN standard will, and
should, take ten years, I listen. And, like others in this forum I'm sure,
had this been the story presented to us when IDNs were first introduced by
VGRS, our rush to offer them may have been somewhat different.

>
> 1. only implement the standard and reject unconforming requests sent by
> existing software
> 2. accept requests sent by existing software and prepare for the standard
at
> the same time
>

A large part of the problem is that, at least from a registry perspective,
these options seem to change on a weekly basis. Further, these continually
seem to be tied to the cooperation of various vendors of proprietary
technology or worse, platform specific plug-ins. The DNS is not something
that can be changed from the client in, or the server out. Paradoxically, as
 Postel pointed out, it needs to happen "all at the same time" - and until
this is recognized, I can't see the buy-side portion of the industry looking
upon the proposed solutions with the same sort of grace that we did the last
time around.

Thanks again,

-rwr