Internationalized Domain Name (idn)

In addition to this official charter maintained by the IETF Secretariat, there is additional information about this working group on the Web at:

      

Last Modified: 2002-03-28

Chair(s):

James Seng <jseng@pobox.org.sg>
Marc Blanchet <Marc.Blanchet@viagenie.qc.ca>

Internet Area Director(s):

Thomas Narten <narten@us.ibm.com>
Erik Nordmark <erik.nordmark@sun.com>

Internet Area Advisor:

Erik Nordmark <erik.nordmark@sun.com>

Technical Advisor(s):

Harald Alvestrand <harald@alvestrand.no>

Mailing Lists:

General Discussion: idn@ops.ietf.org
To Subscribe: idn-request@ops.ietf.org
Archive: ftp://ops.ietf.org/pub/lists/idn*

Description of Working Group:

The goal of the group is to specify the requirements for
internationalized access to domain names and to specify a standards
track protocol based on the requirements.

The scope of the group is to investigate the possible means of doing
this  and what methods are feasible given the technical impact they
will
have on  the use of such names by humans as well as application
programs, as well as the impact on  other users and administrators of
the domain name system.

A fundamental requirement in this work is to not disturb the current
use
and operation of the domain name system, and for the DNS to continue to
allow any system anywhere to resolve any domain name.

The group will not address the question of what, if any, body should
administer or control usage of names that use this functionality.

The group must identify consequences to the current deployed DNS
infrastructure, the protocols and the applications as well as
transition
scenarios, where applicable.

The WG will actively ensure good communication with interested groups
who are studying the problem of internationalized access to domain
names.


The Action Item(s) for the Working Group are

1. An Informational RFC specifying the requirements for providing
  Internationalized access to domain names. The document should
  provide guidance for development solutions to this problem, taking
  localized (e.g. writing order) and related operational issues into
  consideration.

2. An Informational RFC or RFC's documenting the various proposals and
  Implementations of Internationalization (i18n) of Domain Names. The
  document(s) should also provide a technical evaluation of the
  proposals by the Working Group.

3. A standards track specification on access to internationalized
domain
  names including specifying any transition issues.

Goals and Milestones:

Done    First draft of the requirements document
Done    Presentation and discussion at IETF-Adelaide
Done    Second version of the requirement document
Done    Final discussion on the requirement document
AUG 00    Req document wg last call
SEP 00    First draft of comparaison document
DEC 00    Final discussion of comparaison document
DEC 00    Protocol RFC first draft
JAN 01    Comparaison document wg last call
MAR 01    Protocol RFC second draft
MAR 01    Transition RFC first draft
JUN 01    Protocol RFC wg last call
JUN 01    Transition RFC second draft
SEP 01    Transition RFC wg last call

Internet-Drafts:

Transitional Reflexive ASE - IDN Transition (IDNX) 39458 bytes)
Internationalized Domain Names in URIs (14072 bytes)

Request For Comments:

Internationalizing Domain Names In Applications (IDNA) (RFC 3490) (51943 bytes)
Nameprep: A Stringprep Profile for Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) (RFC 3491) (10316 bytes)
Punycode:A Bootstring encoding of Unicode for Internationalized Domain Names in Applications (IDNA) (RFC 3492) (67439 bytes)