Hi, Thanks for the comments. I write to express my own views, and not as a representative if ICANN or the team. I have some questions. On Sat, Jan 07, 2012 at 06:56:27AM -0800, SM wrote:
At 14:41 04-01-2012, Andrew Sullivan wrote:
"if an email is sent to localpart@dname.example.com and that name has a DNAME that resolves to realname.example.com, the mail transport agent is not going to rewrite the server-part of the address."
I have some doubts about whether the above is correct.
Hrm. I suppose it is possible that the MTA could be configured to rewrite the server-part to get this right, since I know you can configure postfix, anyway, to do just about anything to nearly any part of mail it is sending. But I know of no MTA today that does this habitually. That may well merely be my ignorance, however, so I'd be pleased to learn of a counter-example. In any case, since "…not going to…" is so strong, what about "…will not normally rewrite…" instead? Also, to be clear, this is the server-part of the address in the header that it is supposed to be altering (which will, of course, affect what happens when the RCPT TO: command is given, which is I guess what you're disagreeing with?). Is that not plain from the text?
"It might, however, be one important type of variant-inspiring behavior, because most of the deployed code today supports IDNA2003 and not IDNA2008."
I did not find any comment in the report about how to reverse the trend.
No, I don't think there is such a comment there. Do you have any suggestions? Because I'd have thought IDNA2008 recommended itself if only because it broke the dependency on a version of Unicode that nobody uses any more. But apparently not, and I have no idea how to inspire the changeover beyond "wait long enough". (UTS 46 isn't helping, IMO.)
"The users of the DNS are varied in respect of what they expect, what they want, and what they need."
This section lumps users and technical usage together. There is not much of a difference between Law enforcement and other security investigators and end users. Instead of System administrators and Software developers, it would have been clearer to discuss technical usage and the issues that may occur.
I guess I'm not sure what you mean by "users and technical usage" here. What do you mean by "users"? To me, sysadmins are users of the DNS just as much as my mother is when she's visiting a web site, although they're users of different sorts, with different needs, and of different capabilities.
"Similarly, any site renumbering and so on will require twice the effort"
I don't see what site renumbering has to do with (DNS) strings.
If we add "…because all all the A and AAAA records will need to be alterned in double the number of zones," does it help? If you renumber one site known by one name, you have to alter the A and AAAA records for that site in that zone. If it's known by two names without using any aliasing, then you have to alter such records in two zones; and so on.
There are some examples to illustrate how the Internet, which has been reduced to web and email, may be affected. The web examples are simplistic.
Yes. Some earlier drafts (and some text that nobody except me ever saw) had some more complicated examples, but either people didn't understand them or else I thought they couldn't be made understandable by people who didn't already have a clear idea about how the underlying protocols work. I'm extremely uncomfortable with the focus on the web and on email in this report, but those protocols have a few advantages: (1) they're well-known to (if not well-understood by) just about anybody; (2) they're relied upon widely enough that nobody needs an argument why making them behave in really surprising ways tomorrow would be a bad idea; and, (3) they're each in their way linked fairly closely to the names by which the servers in question are known, with one type of server absolutely requiring knowledge of names for which it is the final desitnation and the other type practically requiring the same thing after HTTP 1.1. That said, I'd be really interested in suggestions for other protocols you think would be good illustrations, particularly taking into account (1) and (2).
The two words which stand out in the report are Cost and DNAME. The report emphasizes that there will be higher costs in all areas; i.e. an increase in revenue for anyone with an interest in the work, from ICANN or the software developer. DNAME might be read as the off-the-self "solution" to technical problems.
I'm not sure how to read this paragraph. Are you suggesting that the report, with its discussion of cost, is setting out an argument for increased revenues? As for DNAME, my reading of the text was that it made fairly strong arguments for why DNAME is not a good "solution" to these technical problems. Is that not how you read things? If so, I'd be interested to understand what you thought the text was saying instead. Thanks very much for the remarks and for raising your observations here where we can discuss them. Best regards, A -- Andrew Sullivan ajs@anvilwalrusden.com