There have been a lot of discussion on that the usage of UTF-8 in DNS would break a lot of things today.
But will it? DNS as it is today handles UTF-8 in domain names (but do not know how to compare names case-insensitivly). All ASCII names will work as before, UTF-8 is fully compatible with ASCII only for them. What applications will break? The most important I can think of is e-mail. But it need not break. Many wanting to use non-ASCII will probably have an ASCII name for use in e-mail for many years more. And the enhanced e-mail applications that those using non-ASCII in names will use, will handle the conversion from UTF-8 to ASCII. Any other important applications? The most important for me as a system owner would be to have the OS handle them. Here ACE will never do. Only native names will do. I would suspect by removing the application code that restricts host names to ASCII will make a lot of old code work. Have anybody done any real tests to see what will work and what will not? Remember that it is those wanting to use non-ASCII in names who also quickly will fix their software to make it work. You can start to introduce UTF-8 names where it will not break older applications and use ASCII names where they will. You cannot just put UTF-8 in DNS and then test what will break. Few will do like that. If you know that there are problems you will start using UTF-8 in a way to avoid making things stop. I am very doubtfull that UTF-8 would introduce more problems than IDNA/ACE will do. Dan
