Internet DRAFT - draft-ekrema-smldn
draft-ekrema-smldn
Standardization of Multilingualizing Rifaah Ekrema
Domain Names( MLDN) Mohamed A. Elhamalaway
[Target Category: Standards Track] Omar Bakleh
Khaled Alahmad
<draft-Ekrema-smldn-00.txt> Fidaa Al-Jundi
Expire: 8-April-2005 Mhd. Elfatih Altijani
"By submitting this Internet-Draft, I certify that any applicable
patent or other IPR claims of which I am aware have been disclosed,
orwill be disclosed, and any of which I become aware will be
disclosed,in accordance with RFC 3668."
Standardization of Multilingualizing Domain Names( MLDN)
Status of this Memo:
This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with all
provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026 except that the right to produce
derivative works is not granted.
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Copyright Notice:
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2004). All Rights Reserved.
Abstract:
Until now, many standards was issued to standardize creating and managing
IDN (Internationalized Domain Names), all those standards discussed the
technical problem issued from the need to keep the structure of the internet
that uses standard (ASCII) domain names untouched; using this pretext those
standards forced some rules that make lingual grammars for some languages
not respected on the language domain names.
This document will try to define a new type of domain names called the
"multilingual domain names" (MLDNs) , these names are supposed to respect
the grammatical and spelling of every language so at least, every language
can use the words of its own dictionary in its own domain names.
The system supposed to manage the reservation and the resolution of the new
domain names (MLDNs) must also respect the infrastructure of the traditional
domain names system (DNS) untouched so it will not jeopardize the stability
of the internet.
In the rest of the document we will refer to that system by MLDNS (Multi-
Lingual Domain Names System).
MLDNS Will use the same large repertoire of Unicode characters to compose
its domain names and that means the use of none-ASCII characters, this use
must allow all languages to have their domain names that respect their
language properties and rules. Also it must depends on a technique that
keeps the stable DNS system untouched.
Comments on this document can be sent to the authors at:
arabic-idn-admin@aietf.org.
Table of content:
1.Introduction
2.Problem Analysis
3.Introducing MLDN
4.ML Recommendations
5.MLDNA
6.Full Copyright Statement:
7.References
8.Terms
9.Authors
1. Introduction:
Internationalized domain names (IDN) are still a subject of a great
debates between technical associations and organizations, each one
tries to create new standards that controls the new addressing mass
that will be launched by the new unlimited possibilities of non ASCII
domain names, all those standards agree on one major issue that is
keeping the current stable DNS system unaffected by the new era of
using UNICODE domain names.
Focusing on technical issues in all drafts and RFCs talking about IDN
imposed a lot of natural language usage limitations, and these
limitations prevent national languages from using all their characters
and all their vocabulary and their sentences structure in their
national domain names. And in some times those limitations force the
user to use domain names that does not satisfy the grammars of the
natural language.
For example, the prevention of using space character in domain names
will force languages that contain joint characters (characters that
change their shapes according to their place in the word) to have un-
readable domain names, the suggested solution is to use dashes to
separate between words consists of joinable characters and this is not
acceptable grammatically. like Chinese and Arabic languages as RFC
3743 and internet draft "draft-bakleh-reg-adm-acg-apu-00.txt".
2. Problem Analysis:
The problem mentioned in the introduction is caused by the fact that
IDN rule makers have prepared general studies to control the creation
of IDNs, such studies does not take in consideration the properties
and the specialties of each language and as a result we have
Internationalized domain name that does not satisfy the user needs of
having user friendly domain names which are familiar to his own
national language which is called multilingual domain name MLDN.
This can be clearly seen by the fact that we have a UNIQUE nameprep
proposed to test all the domain names in the world in all the
languages of the world nations, and this nameprep is recommended to be
the first layer to handle the domain name and decide wither it can be
used as an IDN or not. which isnÆt a technical need to keep the
current DNS stability and the network infrastructure untouched.
3. Introducing MLDN:
The term MLDN stands for MultiLingual Domain Names, the only
difference between IDN and MLDN is that MLDN allows each language to
implement its own nameprep to test its own domain names, and it allows
each language to put syntactical rules of composing its own domain
names. And so it will be the sole responsible of determining its
domain names method and nameprep method managing its reservation and
registration systems, but it is NOT allowed to each language to have
its own ACE (ACII Compatible Encoding) to represent its domain names.
4. ML Recommendations:
MLDN must have several namepreps but a unique ACE to encode the
national domain name. based on these MLDNs recommendations:
1.MLDNA must not use more than one lingual character set in any part
of MLDNs.
2.The lingual nameprep must gives the possibility to use all
languageÆs words in the domain name system from both technical and
grammatical point of view.
3.MLDNA reservation must have the technical possibility to register
any domain name agreed by its nameprep method.
4.MLDN must give each nation a full control to determine its lingual
nameprep and its elements (the UNICODE characters set and its
(MLgTLDs) Multilingual generic Top Level domain names and its
(MLccTLDs) Multilingual country code Top Level Domain Names) to
be the UNIQUE choice to use in its domain names. The nation's
control must be submitting by the accreditation of its official
countries through its ccTLDs authorities as the sole publisher
through ICANN and IANA.
5.MLDN must create an smart ACE based on variant characters
encoding according its using rates to have longer MLDNs more
than the PUNYCODE gives.
5. MLDNA:
To realize this goal we have to take the previous RFCs talking about
IDN (Internationalized domain names) in consideration, specially RFC
3490 talking about IDNA (Internationalized Domain Names in
Application) this RFC offers a reasonable solution to realize non
ASCII domain names system based on the current DNS system.
IDNA suggests that the following structure to realize IDN system.
+------+
| User |
+------+
^
| Input and display: local interface methods
| (pen, keyboard, glowing phosphorus, ...)
+-------------------|-------------------------------+
| v |
| +-----------------------------+ |
| | Application | |
| | (ToASCII and ToUnicode | |
| | operations may be | |
| | called here) | |
| +-----------------------------+ |
| ^ ^ | End system
| | | |
| Call to resolver: | | Application-specific |
| ACE | | protocol: |
| v | ACE unless the |
| +----------+ | protocol is updated |
| | Resolver | | to handle other |
| +----------+ | encodings |
| ^ | |
+-----------------|----------|----------------------+
DNS protocol: | |
ACE | |
v v
+-------------+ +---------------------+
| DNS servers | | Application servers |
+-------------+ +---------------------+
This structure gives the possibility to realize what we have already
called MLDN, according to this RFC each IDN system will have its
toASCII function or layer that grantees the conversion of UNICODE
domain names into standard domain name. the main obstacle in IDNA that
prevents the realization of MLDN is the existence of the UNIQUE
nameprep in the toASCII layer.
So the idea of MLDNA is to use the IDNA structure but to let each
language build its own nameprep and us it in the toASCII layer.
Allowing the national language users to build its nameprep will permit
them to put linguistic rules to control the creation of the languages
national domain names according to its grammatical and orthographical
rules. And this will guarantee the creation of user friendly MLDNs
with the full respect to both internet current infrastructure and
national languages needs.
6. Full Copyright Statement:
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2004). This document is subject to the
rights, licenses and restrictions contained in BCP 78 and except as set forth
therein, the authors retain all their rights.
THIS DOCUMENT AND THE INFORMATION CONTAINED HEREIN ARE PROVIDED ON AN "AS IS"
BASIS AND THE CONTRIBUTOR, THE ORGANIZATION HE/SHE REPRESENTS OR IS SPONSORED BY
(IF ANY), THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIM
ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY
THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY
IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
DISCLAIMER
THIS DOCUMENT AND THE INFORMATION CONTAINED HEREIN IS PROVIDED ON AN "AS IS"
BASIS AND THE AUTHORS, THE ORGANIZATION THEY REPRESENT OR ARE SPONSORED BY, THE
INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIM ALL
WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT
THE USE OF THE INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
7. References:
[RFC3492]
Punycode: A Bootstring encoding of Unicode for Internationalized
Domain Names in Applications (IDNA)A. Costello Univ. of
California, Berkeley Category: Standards Track, March 2003
[RFC3491]:
Nameprep: A Stringprep Profile for Internationalized Domain Names
(IDN) P. Hoffman, IMC & VPNC M. Blanchet, Viagenie Category:
Standards Track, March 2003.
[RFC3490]:
Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA) P.
Faltstrom, Cisco, Category: Standards Track P. Hoffman, IMC &
VPNC, A. Costello, UC Berkeley, March 2003.
[RFC3743]:
Joint Engineering Team (JET) Guidelines for Internationalized
Domain Names (IDN) Registration and Administration for Chinese,
Japanese, and Korean.
8. Terms:
MLDN: Multi Lingual Domain Name.
IDN: Internationalized Domain Name.
IDNA: Internationalized Domain Name in Application. (RFC 3490)
Nameprep: A Stringprep Profile for Internationalized Domain Names; draft-
ietf-idn-nameprep, Feb 2002, Paul Hoffman, Marc Blanchet, work in progress.
Punycode: An encoding of Unicode for use with IDNA, draft-ietf-idn-punycode,
Feb 2002, Adam M. Costello, work in progress.
9. Authors:
Rifaah Ekrema:
AIETF Organization
P.O: 30775
Damascus, Syria.
Phone: +963 93 611087
Fax: +963 11 2238490
rifaah@aietf.org
Omar Bakleh:
Damascus University, Damascus, Syria
Phone: +963 93 363004
Fax: +963 11 2139804
Omar@damasuniv.shern.net
Mohamed A. Elhamalaway:
Al-Azhar University, Systems & Computers Engineering dept.
Cairo, Egypt.
Phone: +20 6321465
Fax: +20 6377446
mhamalwy@yahoo.com
Fidaa Al-Jundi:
Nozum Alhausabah Company,
Dubai, UAE.
Phone: +971 50 6507282
fida@hausabah.com
Khaled Alahmad:
High Institute of Applicable Science & technology,
Damascus, Syria
Phone: +963 93 330345
ka@ka-it.net
Mhd. Elfatih Altijani:
Technical Manager, Sudatel,
Alkhartoum, Sudan.
Phone: +249 12 390573
elfatih@sudatel.net
