1 MULTILINGUAL DOMAIN NAMES Hirofumi Hotta JOINT ITU/WIPO SYMPOSIUM December 6, 日本レジストリサービス.jp

2 ASCII characters in the Internet The Internet as the birth –Born in the United States –Research and academic users Limited resources in computers and communication devices –Only ASCII codes are used for the core of the Internet Only ASCII characters have been used even by people using non-ASCII characters in social life 1,2

3 Ex) non-English characters in Step1 –Phonetic mapping in texts Step2 –Native language characters in texts Step3 –Native language characters in “Subject” fields Step4 ? –Native language characters in “To” and “From” field Names such as company names and personal names in the social relevant context should be presented in their native language

4 What is a domain name ? Human readable identifier of an entity within the Internet : Ex) Substitute of an IP address each label < 63 characters domain name < 255 characters top level domain label second level domain label third level domain label domain name = =

5 Domain name structure “ ” com sunyahoo org jp coorgo ukau ad jprs int itu wipo nic

6 Characters in domain names Consumers ASCII character set users –Nativelyex) English –In transliterated formex) Malay Non-ASCII character set users –Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Tamil, …. LDH Computer Engineers Wider users ??? (letters-digits-hyphen)

7 Demands on multilingual domain names Rapid growth of the Internet –More non-English speakers are becoming Internet users People using non-ASCII characters Undesirable unification in LDH world – 博文, 博史, 宏史, …..are all “hirofumi”s in ASCII space –Apostrophe, accents, umlauts, ….. cannot be used in ASCII space Demand on multilingual domain names

8 History (technology) Late 1990s –Multilingual domain names were developed at the National University of Singapore July 1998 –Asia Pacific Networking Group iDNS Working group : development of the experimental implementation of an Internationalized multilingual multiscript Domain Names Service –Why shouldn’t domain names be internationalized too, now that the Internet has grown to reach almost every corner of the world using different languages? iDomain Working Group : creation of an iDNS testbed in Asia Pacific countries China, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, …. 3

9 History (technology) - continued –Prototypes demonstrated in international conferences –BoFs held in international conferences APRICOT INET –Singapore, China, Hong Kong, Korea, Japan, … expressed interests in implementation Nov –BoF in IETF –IETF Mailing list discussion Jan –IDN (Internationalized Domain Name) Working Group in IETF

10 History (deployment) End of 1999 –Several companies began commercialization of the multilingual domain name technology –Several testbeds emerged July –MINC (Multilingual Domain Names Consortium) promotion of the multilingualization of Internet names, including Internet domain names and keywords, the internationalization of Internet names standards and protocols, technical coordination, and liaison with other international bodies –Country/regional organizations AINC (Arabic Internet Names Consortium) CDNC (Chinese Domain Name Consortium ) INFITT (International Forum for IT in Tamil ) JDNA (Japanese Domain Names Association )

11 History (policy) March 2001 –Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) Working Group in ICANN Board Fact finding survey concerning technical, policy, and service aspects Survey report published in Sept –Market demand shown –List of issues elaborated –GAC (Governmental Advisory Committee) of ICANN communiqué expressing GAC’s support for multilingual domain names –With regard to international domain names, the GAC confirms the importance and interests of this development to the benefit of Internet users worldwide Sept –IDN Committee Will recommend solutions of non-technical issues

12 How domain names are resolved IP address of.com name server IP address of.int name server IP address of.jp name server : IP address of itu.int name server IP address of wipo.int name server : root server.int name server IP address of IP address of intra.itu.int ： A server having itu.int name server intend to browse managed by IANA managed by ITU managed by IANA on behalf of.int http port Internet

13 Where multilingual domain names are recognized DNS server application client application user Internet currently ASCII domain names multilingual domain names application multilingual domain names option 1 option 2 in the future PC

14 Key technical questions How should non-ASCII codes be represented ? Where should non-ASCII codes be recognized ? –in the client application / in the DNS server What is the technical mechanism that maps multilingual domain names to current DNS technology ?

15 Basic technical requirements Preservation of compatibility with current domain names Preservation of uniqueness of domain name space The Internet must not be divided into islands Required by IAB (Internet Architecture Board)

16 Character codes of multilingual domain names Current : proprietary (local) standard –in PCs –in PDAs –in Internet-enabled phones Best current solution may be –UNICODE –Specification of code sets of many languages Additional issues –traditional Chinese characters / simplified Chinese characters Are they same characters in domain names ? Is this a local code issue or universal protocol issue ?

17 Client-side vs. Server-side solutions Client-side solution –Translation between multilingual script and ASCII- compatible representation is performed in the user application –Domain names are processed as ASCII domain names all over the Internet Server-side solution –Domain names are sent over the Internet in local encoding –Applications and services communicate with each other using non-ASCII domain names all the way ASCII domain names multilingual domain names client-side solution server-side solution userapplicationDNS

18 Client-side solution > Server-side solution IETF is moving towards client-side solution Stability –DNS is a huge distributed database –DNS is working on a delicate balance –Substantial change of DNS is dangerous Deployment speed –Changing all the servers takes long time Consistency –Partial deployment of server-side solution may lead to separation of the Internet

19 How multilingual string is converted to ASCII original string normalized string ASCII string Internet (based on ASCII) unification of the strings considered to be the same conversion to an ASCII string NAMEPREP ACE ABC カンパニー.JP ＡＢＣｶﾝﾊﾟﾆｰ.JP Ａ B Ｃカンハ゜ニー.JP ABC カンパニー.JP BQ--GD7UD72C75B2X46RZP6A.JP ex)

20 NAMEPREP and ACE NAMEPREP (Preparation of Internationalized Host Names) –Multilingual string representations which should be regarded as the same string are converted into one representation Case fold Normalize Prohibit ACE (ASCII Compatible Encoding) –Multilingual representation is converted into an appropriate ASCII domain name –Ex) ACE algorithm RACE –BQ--3BS6KZZMRKPDBSJQ4EYKIMHTKQGU7CY AMC-ACE-Z –ZQ--ECKWD4C7CU47R2WFQW7A0ECL32K

21 Issues in using ACE Subspace is used by multilingual domain names Issues –Reservation of the subspace –Length limitation is severer Domain label Domain name ASCII Domain Names ACE-ed Multilingual Domain Names Multilingual Domain Names ACE decode

22 IDNA user internal representation UI API application servers end system application local international resolver DNS servers NAMEPREP To/From Unicode To/From ACE NAMEPREP to/from ACE to/from Unicode (Internationalizing Host Names in Applications)

23 Impact on the DNS structure Alternate root Hierarchy overseen by ICANN multilingual domain name space multilingual domain name space Name Server Name Server Name Server TLDs not authorized by ICANN 5 authoritative root multilingualized

24 Impact on the DNS structure (continued) Inclusive root (variation of alternate root) Hierarchy overseen by ICANN multilingual domain name space Name Server unauthorized TLDs can be seen together with ICANN’s multilingualized

25 Impact on the DNS structure (continued) Pseudo-root (zero level domain) multilingual domain name space Name Server Hierarchy overseen by ICANN 銀行. 企業.jp append “.jp” to “ 銀行. 企業 ” jp 企業 銀行 銀行. 企業

26 Defining a multilingual top level domain Current implementation of multilingual domain names –Second level domain or under Allowed by current DNS architecture and technology –Top level domain Alternate root Inclusive root Pseudo-root Above are only to satisfy commercial drive or users’ demands on early deployment of multilingual domain names It is important for ICANN to define a multilingual top level domain creation policy

27 Issues in various TLDs {non-ASCII-string}.{ASCII-ccTLD} {non-ASCII-string}.{ASCII-gTLD} –Organizations already being authorized are responsible for the domain name space {any-string}.{non-ASCII-ccTLD} –One organization from the relevant country is named to be responsible for the domain name space –If a country has more than 1 official language, What is the language for non-ASCII-ccTLD, or How many non-ASCII-ccTLDs are given to the country {any-string}.{non-ASCII-gTLD} –No one can tell whether top level domain “. 企業 ” is Chinese or Japanese –Difficulty in choosing a responsible organization who in what country 6

28 Other political issues What are the languages that constitute multilingual domain names –Some languages have 2 or more kinds of scripts –Traditional Chinese/simplified Chinese Who is the language authority for multilingual domain names –Should rules be the same even under different TLDs? A single domain name registry should not be the ultimate authority of for the rules Is such rule definition an international issue? –Language rules are known to only people using the language To what extent does the solution need international standard or local coordination? Each language stakeholders should coordinate among themselves

29 Implementations VGRS (VeriSign Global Registry Services) JPNIC/JPRS (Japan Network Information Center / Japan Registry Service) i-DNS.net CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center) Walid Neteka NativeNames : 7

30 Future Issues synergy deployment of name servers with multilingual domain names growth of the number of multilingual domain names and their users applications with multilingual domain name facilities policy and coordination of registration and management rules technology standardization and development 8