On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 10:56:10PM +0800, James Seng wrote: > By the same logic, the whole IDN would be pointless because RFC 1035 > restrict labels to "alphabetic letter" only.
I'd like the reference to where 1035 says that, please. In particular, the following passage in §3.1 of RFC 1035 seems to say something different: Although labels can contain any 8 bit values in octets that make up a label, it is strongly recommended that labels follow the preferred syntax described elsewhere in this memo, which is compatible with existing host naming conventions. In addition, > IDNA transform IDN labels into punycode so that it become transparent > to the resolvers who made those assumption. you seem to be making my argument for me. The reason IDNA is preferable to some of the alternatives is that some resolver software indeed understood 1034 and 1035 to mean that the "preferred syntax" ought to be enforced (in what seems to me a plain violation of those RFCs). We have to live with those widely-deployed resolvers, and therefore we need to design other protocols as though the additional restrictions that are _not_ part of the DNS protocol are in fact part of it. Designing the protocols for the actually existing conditions in the network is what makes the design activity "engineering" rather than "research", I think. A -- Andrew Sullivan a...@shinkuro.com Shinkuro, Inc. _______________________________________________ DNSOP mailing list DNSOP@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/dnsop